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67 People I'd Like to Slap is one man's journey through the labyrinthine world of human angst and annoyance. The comedy writer, broadcaster and journalist Ian Collins lists, exposes and mocks that irritating contingent of the human race whose job, it seems, is to make life just a tad more infuriating than it needs to be. From psychics to exotic pet owners, Brits using chopsticks and over-35s at music festivals, through to middle-class protesters, elderly people in small cars and the billion cringe-crimes that are committed on social media every day (plus a healthy dose of well-known names too), Collins's often brutal but hilarious search into the pit of human idiocy leaves few stones unturne...
Uplifting and engaging, this story recounts the life and career of a rebellious 20th-century British artist Born into a large, musical, and bohemian family in London, the British artist John Craxton (1922–2009) has been described as a Neo-Romantic, but he called himself a “kind of Arcadian”. His early art was influenced by Blake, Palmer, Miró, and Picasso. After achieving a dream of moving to Greece, his work evolved as a personal response to Byzantine mosaics, El Greco, and the art of Greek life. This book tells his adventurous story for the first time. At turns exciting, funny, and poignant, the saga is enlivened by Craxton’s ebullient pictures. Ian Collins expands our understanding of the artist greatly—including an in-depth exploration of the storied, complicated friendship between Craxton and Lucian Freud, drawing on letters and memories that Craxton wanted to remain private until after his death.
Ukulele Magic is the perfect tutor for children and for teachers. Rock to ragtime, bluegrass to swing, tango, calypso and the blues - they're all here in instantly accessible songs to play straight away ~ whether solo, with friends, or with the whole class. Fully supported by video tutorials and audio performances and backings. The teacher's edition, BOOK+CD-ROM, contains a whiteboard e-book with embedded audio and video tutorials for every song, making it ideal for classroom teaching. The 25 pieces carefully progress from playing open strings (eg Stringalong Rag) to songs with one chord (Shortnin bread, A minor miracle, F major march) to two chords (Baboushka, Tab tango, Calypso strum) and finally three chords (In South Africa, Playing the blues). Finger-picking and strumming styles are all introduced step by step in pieces which are fun and stylistic. This is a thoroughly musical introduction to an immensely popular instrument, opening the way to independent music-making for all. Website extras for teachers include lesson plans with teaching support and extra song suggestions to sing and play.
From Turner to Damien Hirst via Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Stanley Spencer and Lucian Freud Southwold has drawn some of the biggest names in British art and a wealth of distinctive talents. Most have found magic here. A few have noted something darker. The port-resort with brewery, pier and lighthouse at its heart is a creative beacon: Philip Wilson Steer, fresh from France, virtually invented British Impressionism in the adjoining artists' summer colony of Walberswick from 1884 - the year pioneering photographer P.H. Emerson moved to Southwold. Ian Collins also reveals how modern British art so nearly had a Suffolk rather than a Cornish air. Most of all this book lovingly portrays a very special place through the eyes and lives of artists, both resident and visiting. It revels in waves of art taking in everything from serious treasures to cartoon postcards: an essential companion for all lovers of East Anglia's first resor"
In the latest addition to the New Naturalist series, Ian Newton explores bird populations and what causes their fluctuation – food supplies, competitors, predators, parasites, pathogens and human activity.
This new book on painter Rose Hilton (b.1931), one of the last survivors of the legendary St Ives group of post-war Modernist artists, is an illustrated, personal account of her life and work which focuses on her blossoming late career. Rose Hilton turns 85 in 2016 and shows no sign of relaxing her industrious work rate. In fact, since her 2008 Tate St Ives exhibition, her output of radiant abstract paintings has grown prodigiously. Author Ian Collins has been a close friend of Rose Hilton for over 20 years and has sat for numerous paintings by the artist. Placing Rose Hilton's relationship with painter Roger Hilton in the context of her whole career, Collins' text focuses on recent work, drawing on interviews with friends and family, as well as extracts from archival material, to produce a wonderfully intimate account of Hilton's life, experiences and approaches to picture-making.
"Elusive, enigmatic and beautiful, Joan Leigh Fermor [a.k.a. Joan Rayner] (1912-2003) was also one of the finest photographers of her time. Although hailed and hired by John Betjeman and Cyril Connolly from the 1930s, and a remarkable recorder of the London Blitz, she most excelled in pictures of unspoilt Greece taken between 1945 and 1960 as visual notes and with no thought of publication. The scale of her achievement was only discovered after her death in 2003. What emerge in her wide-ranging work is an eye of immense subtlety and empathy, and an entire absence of ego. The artist's ease is reciprocated in the faces of Cretan shepherds, Meteoran monastics and Macedonian bear-tamers. Her vision is both intimate in portraiture and architecture, and panoramic in landscape, and most firmly focused in an abiding love of Greece. The archive of 5,000 images now in the National Library of Scotland - and partly introduced in this monograph - reveals, at long last, a 20th century photographer of significance."--Provided by publisher.
The one book your family needs to understand the world of art. A beautiful, unusual and engaging compendium of art history, providing an accessible entree into the world of art for everyone, regardless of their experience. From cave paintings to the Renaissance, Impressionism to Pop Art, The Collins Big Book of Art takes you on a journey through the history of art in a delightful and informative way. With more than 1200 works of art represented, this is both a coffee– table book and an educational experience; cross–referenced throughout, and including the following sections and features: A Chronology spans the history of art, step by step, from 38,000 BC to the present. Pieces from aroun...
'An intimate and insightful portrait of the peerless observer of rural life' RICHARD MABEY 'Moving, candid, vivid, it is all that we could hope for in a memoir of this unique and treasured writer' ROWAN WILLIAMS 'As a boy I dreamed of scholars and saints wandering around markets and cornfields, and of artists and poets sitting under the trees.' Ronald Blythe (1922-2023), author of the inimitable Akenfield, was a prolific and poetic chronicler of rural and spiritual life, nature and literature. He spent a joyful century close to his Suffolk roots, time travelling in his imagination and publishing forty books and thousands of essays. His wide creative network included John and Christine Nash, ...