The critically acclaimed biography of Shakespeare's most enduring heroine, Rosalind, now in paperback. Into the spotlight steps Rosalind, the actor-manager of As You Like It. She's alive. She's modern. She's also a fiction. Played by a boy actor in 1599, she's a girl who gets into men's clothes to investigate the truth about love. Both male and female, imaginary and real, her intriguing duality gives her a special role. What is a man? What is a woman? We are all Rosalind now. This book is for everyone who has ever loved Shakespeare. Like Rosalind, his most innovative heroine, he can never die. She too is timeless. There is no clock in the Forest of Arden where Rosalind finds herself and applies her mercurial wit to teach her lover, Orlando, how to become her perfect partner, issues which consume men and women today. This highly original 'biography' of Rosalind contains exclusive new interviews with Juliet Rylance, Sally Scott, Janet Suzman, Juliet Stevenson, Michelle Terry, award-winning director Blanche McIntyre, as well as insights from Michael Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Greg Doran, Rebecca Hall, Adrian Lester, Pippa Nixon, Vanessa Redgrave and Fiona Shaw. Angela Thirlwell explores the fictitious life and the many after-lives of Rosalind, Shakespeare's progressive new heroine, and her perennial influence on drama, fiction and art. The book ranges widely across Tudor history, theatre history, sexual politics, autobiography, art history and filmography. On a single day Cush Jumbo wins the Sunday Times Ian Charleson Award for her performance as Rosalind at Manchester's Royal Exchange - 'it's a dream role,' she says, 'the greatest female part in Shakespeare.'

"Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite" - the third in a series of publications on Birmingham's unique collection of 19th-century drawings - reassesses the work of this important artist, and reveals his achievements. Older than his contemporaries Holman Hunt, Millais, and pupil Rossetti, and never officially a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Ford Madox Brown was nonetheless a central figure within this major art movement. The creator of "Work" and "The Last of England," whose art was marked by an unmistakable originality in the face of critical rejection and market failure, Madox Brown has until now remained a neglected presence in art history.
In this volume Angela Thirlwell, deals with the broader aspects of the artist's developments, setting his works in the context of his life, Tim Barringer, studies the difficulty of categorizing Madox Brown's work, and his refusal to be defined by a particular artistic movement, and Laura MacCulloch, looks specifically at Madox Brown's illustrations, including his undervalued drawings for Shakespeare's "King Lear" and Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon." Ther is a complete catalogue listing of all 174 drawings, watercolours, designs and archive material by Madox Brown in the BMAG collection.