A fearless innovator who inspired designers, models, photographers, and artists, Diana Vreeland, the famed editor of Vogue, reinvented the way we think about style. In this first full-length biography, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart tells the story of Vreeland's childhood on New York's Upper East Side, her first job at Harper's Bazaar, her renowned post at Vogue, and her role as special consultant to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Empress of Fashion is an intimate and surprising look at an icon who made a lasting mark on the world of couture.

The horror of the First World War brought out a characteristic response in a group of English artists, who resorted to black humour. Among these, John Hassall, a pioneering British illustrator and creator of the influential 'Skegness is so bracing' poster, holds a special place. Early in the war, he hit on the idea of drawing a parody of the Bayeux Tapestry to satirize German aggression and add to the growing genre of war propaganda. Taking the scheme of the famous tapestry which celebrates William the Conqueror's invasion of England, Hassall uses thirty pictorial panels to tell the story of Kaiser Wilhem II's invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium. In mock-archaic language he narrates the progress of the German army, never missing an opportunity to lampoon 'bad' behaviour: 'Wilhelm giveth orders for frightfulness.' The caricatured Germans loot homes, make gas from Limburg cheese and sauerkraut, drink copious amounts of wine and shamefully march through Luxembourg with 'women and children in front.' With comic inventiveness Hassall adapts the borders of the original to illustrate the stereotypical objects with which the English then associated their enemy: they are decorated with schnitzel, sausages, pilsner, wine corks and wild boar. Drawn with Hassall's distinctive flat colour and striking outlines, Ye Berlyn Tapestrie is a fascinating historical example of war-induced farce, produced by a highly talented artist who could not then have known that the war was set to last for another two years. Together with an introduction which sets out the historical background of its creation, every page of this rarely seen publication is reproduced here in a fold-out concertina, just like the original, to resemble the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.

'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times 'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian 'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader's side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, Spectator This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life. Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: 'When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.' Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang. From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word 'iconic', to John Lennon's shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A burst of springtime joy' Daily Telegraph 'A springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light' The Times 'Lavishly illustrated' Guardian David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he experiences lockdown in rural Normandy On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live.

W. Heath Robinson is best known for his hilarious drawings of zany contraptions, though his work ranged across a wide variety of topics covering many aspects of British life in the decades following the First World War. Starting out as a watercolour artist, he quickly turned to the more lucrative field of book illustration and developed his forte in satirical drawings and cartoons. He was regularly commissioned by the editors of Tatler and The Sketch and in great demand from advertising companies. Collections of his drawings were subsequently published in many different editions and became so successful as to transform Heath Robinson into a household name, celebrated for his eccentric brand of British humour. Presenting such innovations as the 'Zip-Opening Bonnet', the 'Duo-car for the Incompatible' and the handy 'New Rear Wheel Gear for Turning the Car in One Movement', this volume of Heath Robinson illustrations with commentary by K.R.G. Browne will appeal to 'everybody who is ever likely to drive, be driven in, or get run over by a mechanically propelled vehicle'.

Featuring four films by the young Irish filmmaker Kevin Gaffney, Unseen By My Open Eyes is the first publication on the artist's work, exploring the psychological landscapes that the artist devises to explore the construction, projection and manipulation of identity. Within the book, Gaffney's films are presented through a series of richly illustrated sections, providing an excellent insight into the artist's methodologies. The book explores subjects ranging from: daily life in Iran; selfhood and military conscription in Taiwan; geographic, political and emotional separations in South Korea, with characters imagining what the moon looks like from North Korea; and food consumption in a self-sustaining militarised Ireland of the near future where climate change has benefited agricultural production.The book features English scripts of the five films, with an annex compiling the scripts in Korean, Chinese, Persian and Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic).Gaffney's works are contextualised through an accompanying essay by Irish critic Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith.Gaffney was the first Irish recipient of a Sky Academy Arts Scholarship in 2015, and was an UNESCO-Aschberg laureate artist in residence at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art's Changdong Residency in South Korea in 2014. His work features in the Irish Museum of Modern Art's collection, and solo exhibitions have been held at the Linenhall Arts Centre (Ireland), Millennium Court Arts Centre (Northern Ireland) and CAI02 Contemporary Art Institute (Japan).

One of the most visible, popular, and significant artists of his generation, William Hogarth (1697-1764) is best known for his acerbic, strongly moralising works, which were mass-produced and widely disseminated as prints during his lifetime. This volume is a fascinating look into the notorious English satirical artist's life, presenting Anecdotes of William Hogarth, Written by Himself-a collection of autobiographical vignettes supplemented with short texts and essays written by his contemporaries, first published in 1785.

At the start of the March 2020 lockdown, Ian Beck would walk his greyhound Gracie through the early morning streets of Isleworth in west London, revelling in the light and the silence that the restrictions had brought. The familiar became charged with new meaning, inspiring Ian to paint the scenes around him for their own sake, something that he hadn't done since his student days in the sixties. Suburban streets, trees, fences, shrubs and overgrown alleyways - all are transformed in the quiet intensity of Ian's lockdown paintings. He painted interiors too: the moon shining through a bedroom window, objects on mantelpieces, the eeriness of back gardens at dusk. As the year progressed, the crisp light of spring gave way to the haze of summer and the gloom of autumn fogs. The Light in Suburbia collects sixty of Ian's paintings from this period: a remarkable record of his year spent trying to capture the beauty of the unprepossessing everyday.

"Martin Bailey has written some of the most interesting books on Vincent's life in France, where he produced his greatest work" - Johan van Gogh, grandson of Theo, the artist's brother Studio of the South tells the story of Van Gogh's stay in Arles, when his powers were at their height. For Van Gogh, the south of France was an exciting new land, bursting with life. He walked into the hills inspired by the landscapes, and painted harvest scenes in the heat of summer. He visited a fishing village where he saw the Mediterranean for the first time, energetically capturing it in paint. He painted portraits of friends and locals, and flower still life paintings, culminating in the now iconic Sunflowers. He rented the Yellow House, and gradually did it up, calling it 'an artist's house', inviting Paul Gauguin to join him there. This encounter was to have a profound impact on both of the artists. They painted side by side, their collaboration coming to a dramatic end a few months later. The difficulties Van Gogh faced led to his eventual decision to retreat to the asylum at Saint-Remy. Based on extensive original research, the book reveals discoveries that throw new light on the legendary artist and give a definitive account of his fifteen months in Provence, including his time at the Yellow House, his collaboration with Gauguin and its tragic and shocking ending.

Rilke's prayerful responses to the french master's beseeching art

For a long time nothing, and then suddenly one has the right eyes.

Virtually every day in the fall of 1907, Rainer Maria Rilke returned to a Paris gallery to view a Cezanne exhibition. Nearly as frequently, he wrote dense and joyful letters to his wife, Clara Westhoff, expressing his dismay before the paintings and his ensuing revelations about art and life.

Rilke was knowledgeable about art and had even published monographs, including a famous study of Rodin that inspired his New Poems. But Cezanne's impact on him could not be conveyed in a traditional essay. Rilke's sense of kinship with Cezanne provides a powerful and prescient undercurrent in these letters -- passages from them appear verbatim in Rilke's great modernist novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Letters on Cezanne is a collection of meaningfully private responses to a radically new art.

The first monograph on New York-based contemporary artist Richard Phillips, best known for his large-scale paintings that are 'ultra-cool' in execution and very hot in effect. Richard Phillips's hyper realistic oil paintings embody themes as broad as power, politics, celebrity, fashion, ideology, beauty, and sex, and pose questions about the status of painting today: Does the medium remain valid, or has it become a historical pastime? Pornography, propaganda, advertising, entertainment, fashion-Phillips incorporates material from a range of sources to confront what is at the core of contemporary image making, from the power of celebrity branding to complicity between viewer and viewed. The book's exploitative design strategy celebrates the commercial and fashion alliances of the artist's practice, while revealing the complex politics behind the imagery the artist chooses to paint.

The rivalry between the brilliant seventeenth-century Italian architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini is the stuff of legend. Enormously talented and ambitious artists, they met as contemporaries in the building yards of St. Peter's in Rome, became the greatest architects of their era by designing some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and ended their lives as bitter enemies. Engrossing and impeccably researched, full of dramatic tension and breathtaking insight, "The Genius in the Design" is the remarkable tale of how two extraordinary visionaries schemed and maneuvered to get the better of each other and, in the process, created the spectacular Roman cityscape of today.

Sue Clyne is emerging as the UK's leading fantasy artist. She grew up in the Norfolk countryside of rolling hills and woodlands. Her school books were littered with doodles and sketches in margins and on pages. She remains an intuitive artist. She has taken her lead from a varied selection of great artists including Josephine Wall, the late Susan Seddon Boulet and Salavador Dali.

The first monograph and only substantial publication on the work of Patrick George (born 1923), this book will reveal to a largely unsuspecting public the lyrical paintings of a rare and original talent. George is better known as a teacher; he taught for forty years at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London before eventually becoming Director there. He has only shown his work infrequently, yet perceptive commentators have identified him as a School of London painter, to be viewed in the same context as Lucian Freud (a friendly rival), Frank Auerbach (a strong supporter of George's work), and Euan Uglow (George's close friend and colleague). For too long dismissed as a follower of Coldstream, Patrick George is in fact very much his own man, a Northern European landscape and figure painter, working in the tradition of Gainsborough and Constable. In this book, his unique contribution to the development of contemporary landscape painting is for the first time examined and evaluated.

William Morris was an outstanding character of many talents, being an architect, writer, social campaigner, artist and, with his Kelmscott Press, an important figure of the Arts and Crafts movement. Many of us probably know him best, however, from his superb furnishings and textile designs, intricately weaving together natural motifs in a highly stylized two-dimensional fashion influenced by medieval conventions. William Morris Masterpieces of Art offers a survey of his life and work alongside some of his finest decorative work.

The work of counterculture artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, whose art is a complex punk-rock take on modern consumer culture. Enormous neon signs, intricate silhouette portraits constructed of trash heaps, and a work titled Instant Gratification: British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster thrive on the thrills of illumination, love, language, shadows, garbage, and cash. "British Rubbish" showcases their work in all its splashy glory. Their art evokes both gaudy Vegas culture and down-and-dirty punk rock: a combination of cynical extravagance and a defiant, rebellious sensibility. Extravagant, irreverent, sometimes coarse, and always sharply clever, "British Rubbish" is both a paean to and sly denunciation of conspicuous consumption.