What Makes Great Art showcases a selection of 80 outstanding paintings and sculptures from around the world and throughout time, assessing just what it is that makes them so great. Why do some artworks stand out head and shoulders above others? What makes a painting truly great, and secures its artistic legacy for centuries after its creation? Some owe their greatness to composition of colour, others offer profound insights into their human subjects, and some convey their message particularly effectively. Exceptional art somehow satisfies at a deeper level than the rest, and this truly insightful and deeply researched work examinss exactly how 80 of the most significant works of art have persevered, and what makes us come back to them time and time again. Andy Prankhurst's succinct, appraisive text will open your eyes to the unique defining qualities of these key works, enabling you to appreciate the groundbreaking talents of every age. An indispensible book for anyone who wants to understand how and why art continues to fascinate us, this book is a comprehensive guide to these masterpieces and what exactly makes them great.

Winner: Best Trade Illustrated Book, British Book Design & Production Awards 2017 'As to the arsenic scare a greater folly it is hardly possible to imagine: the doctors were bitten as people were bitten by the witch fever.' - William Morris on toxic wallpapers, 1885. Bitten by Witch Fever presents facsimile samples of 275 of the most sumptuous wallpaper designs ever created by designers and printers of the age, including Christopher Dresser and Morris & Co. For the first time in their history, every one of the samples shown has been laboratory tested and found to contain arsenic. Interleaved with the wallpaper sections, evocative commentary guides you through the incredible story of the manufacture, uses and effects of arsenic, and presents the heated public debate surrounding the use of deadly pigments in the sublime wallpapers of a newly industrialized world. Chosen by Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss for their Belletrist Book Club's Gift Guide.

'When I was at primary school, my teacher asked if any of us had heard of Charles Dickens. I was amazed she knew his name, because, until that moment, I had only known him as one of my ancestors.' - Lucinda Hawksley Those who had known Charles Dickens as a child must have been astonished at his rise from being, in his own words, 'a little labouring hind' to becoming one of the most famous and adored men in the world. Dickens is often described as the first 'modern' author, by which it is meant that he went on book tours and engaged with his public in a manner more considered a twentieth- -century phenomenon. Through sheer force of will he propelled himself out of a rather depressing existence into the circle of intelligent, radical, questioning friends who feature in this book. Guests at his parties could expect to meet actors, artists, radical politicians, prison reformers, philanthropists and musicians, as well as writers. Dickens's closest literary friends included Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He also admired and surrounded himself with artists, including two of his oldest friends, Daniel Maclise and Augustus Egg, the celebrity painters Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, William Powell Frith and John Everett Millais, and many of his illustrators: Hablot Knight Browne (aka Phiz), George Cruikshank, and the father and son Frank and Marcus Stone. He worked tirelessly with fellow social reformers including Angela Burdett- - Coutts, Thomas Noon Talfourd and Elizabeth Jesser Reid. Beautifully illustrated with images from the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, this book explores the man behind the novels and the lives of those around him.

Over 2,000 years of history seen through the eyes of 50 extraordinary women. Was Jane Austen a fan of her own work? What did Harriet Tubman want to tell Abraham Lincoln? And how did Greta Thunberg respond to her critics? This carefully curated selection of correspondence on politics, literature, art, entertainment, activism and science provides insight into the personal and professional lives of some of history's most influential names. Each entry includes images and transcripts of the letters themselves along with a biography by celebrated historian Lucinda Hawksley exploring the lives and writings of each woman. Letters of Great Women brings together 50 key female voices on the most significant moments in history, and the everyday joys, sorrows and struggles of women's lives.

From childhood, Charles Dickens was fascinated by tales from other countries and other cultures, and he longed to see the world. In Dickens and Travel, Lucinda Hawksley looks at the journeys made by the author - who is also her great great great grandfather. Although Dickens is usually perceived as a London author, in the 1840s he whisked his family away to live in Italy for year, and spent several months in Switzerland. Some years later he took up residence in Paris and Boulogne (where he lived in secret with his lover). In addition to travelling widely in Europe, he also toured America twice, performed onstage in Canada and, before his untimely death, was planning a tour of Australia. Dickens and Travel enters into the world of the Victorian traveller and looks at how Charles Dickens's journeys influenced his writing and enriched his life.

Dickens and Christmas is an exploration of the 19th-century phenomenon that became the Christmas we know and love today -and of the writer who changed, forever, the ways in which it is celebrated. Charles Dickens was born in an age of great social change. He survived childhood poverty to become the most adored and influential man of his time. Throughout his life, he campaigned tirelessly for better social conditions, including by his most famous work, A Christmas Carol. He wrote this novella specifically to strike a sledgehammer blow on behalf of the poor man's child , and it began the Victorians' obsession with Christmas. This new book, written by one of his direct descendants, explores not only Dickens's most famous work, but also his all-too-often overlooked other Christmas novellas. It takes the readers through the seasonal short stories he wrote, for both adults and children, includes much-loved festive excerpts from his novels, uses contemporary newspaper clippings, and looks at Christmas writings by Dickens' contemporaries. To give an even more personal insight, readers can discover how the Dickens family itself celebrated Christmas, through the eyes of Dickens's unfinished autobiography, family letters, and his children's memoirs. In Victorian Britain, the celebration of Christmas lasted for 12 days, ending on 6 January, or Twelfth Night. Through Dickens and Christmas, readers will come to know what it would have been like to celebrate Christmas in 1812, the year in which Dickens was born. They will journey through the Christmases Dickens enjoyed as a child and a young adult, through to the ways in which he and his family celebrated the festive season at the height of his fame. It also explores the ways in which his works have gone on to influence how the festive season is celebrated around the globe.

This roll-call of British artists confirms the dominance and excellence of British art across five centuries, from Blake toBanksy, Turner to Tracey Emin. This highly readable and informative collection of the best of British art showcases magnificent portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Stanley Spencer; landscapes by J. M. W. Turner and David Hockney; satire by William Hogarth and Gilbert & George; sculpture by Henry Moore and Rachel Whiteread; and the latest works by Grayson Perry and Damien Hirst. Each artist is presented in a double-page spread that features a major work, details from the work, a brief biography and fascinating insights into the artist's life and times. Lucinda Hawksley's engaging survey compares the skill of the Elizabethan miniaturists and the magnificence of the High Victorians with the grit of post-war British modernists and the best of the Young British Artists, whose fearless approach to controversial themes make them worthy inheritors of the great traditions of British art.

Elizabeth Revealed is a lively and affectionate celebration of The Queen's long and eventful life. This gorgeously illustrated book blends personal and public, frivolous and factual in a tribute to an extraordinary woman and the sweeping social changes she has lived through. The enjoyable '500 Facts' format highlights surprising aspects of The Queen's intimate life, the good and the bad years. It offers illuminating glimpses into a changing monarchy and royal family life as an elegant young princess developed into the most famous woman in the world.

Katey Dickens was born into a house of turbulent celebrity and grew up surrounded by fascinating, famous, and infamous people. From a very young age, she knew her vocation was to be an artist. Lucinda Hawksley charts the life of a celebrated portrait painter, who redefines our preconceptions about Victorian women. Living to be almost ninety, Katey survived an unconventional marriage, love affairs, heartbreak, depression, and the challenges of being a female artist in a male-dominated era. Compelling and illuminating, _Katey_ tells the story of a spirited woman who found fame at the centre of the first celebrity phenomenon; it also uncovers the reality of what it was like to be a child of Charles and Catherine Dickens. This biography of Katey, celebrating her artistic prestige-which saw her compared to Millais-is long overdue. The details of her fascinating life await rediscovery.

'A wonderful, inspiring story told with scholarship, passion and wit' - Miriam Margolyes 'A must-read' - Independent on Sunday With an introduction by Dr Helen Pankhurst. An illuminating and riveting exploration of the women's movement in Britain, and the extraordinary women behind it. From the passing of the Marriage and Divorce Act in 1857 to all women attaining the vote in 1928, the struggle for suffrage in the United Kingdom was to be fought using the weapons of intellect, searing rhetoric, and violence in the streets. Ordinary women rose up to defy the roles prescribed by their society to become heroes in the battle for equality. Using anecdotes and accounts by both famous and hitherto lesser-known suffragettes and suffragists, March, Women, March explores how the voices of women came to be heard throughout the land in the pursuit of equal voting rights for all women. Lucinda Hawksley brings the main protagonists of the women's movement to life, sharing diary extracts and letters that show the true voices of these women, while their portrayals in literature and art - as well as the media reports of the day - show just how much of an impact these trailblazers made. 'An accessible and engaging guide to the original women's movement' - Daily Telegraph

This fascinating book uses anecdotes and accounts by both famous and hitherto lesser known suffragettes and suffragists to explore how the voice of women came to be heard throughout the land in the pursuit of equal votes for females. Using diary extracts and letters, the main protagonists of the women's movement are brought back to life as Lucinda Dickens Hawksley explores how they were portayed in literature and art as well as the media reports of the day.