This authoritative biography of John Ruskin, the most influential nineteenth-century critic of art and society, is the fruit of almost twenty years of research and the first to return to the original sources. It draws on the complete text of Ruskin's diaries and many thousands of unpublished letters and other documents to provide fresh insight into the background and content of Ruskin's numerous books. In this fascinating book, Hilton shows how the youthful art critic became a significant didactic writer, developing a unique voice that was to shape his future as the most eloquent and radical of all the great Victorian writers.

An entertaining social and cultural history of cycling in post-war Europe seen through the eyes of a veteran racing cyclist. Written with great literary and historical relish, One More Kilometre examines the spread of cycling's popularity, how it developed into a sport and how the bicycle has changed people's lives - all viewed through the eyes of a seasoned 56-year-old racing cyclist/art critic who keeps eleven racing cycles in his garden shed and who never cycles less than 10,000 miles a year. The book starts with the 1950s, regarded as the golden age of cycling, and when the author, 'an unhappy communist child', first discovered cycling and its emancipating powers. Progressing through four decades of cycling social history, the author will examine cycling as a Continental phenomenon, the rise and fall of the Tour de France; the lives of the great 'trackmen'; cycling in its domestic form, cycling for fun, the ever-popular British cycling clubs - some of which are over one hundred years old and are home to many fellow eccentrics, fanatics and old-timers, like the author's friend, 'the Yorkshire junior road race champion of 1954, now living in a caravan, crippled and penniless with his much younger companion a taxidermist - beautiful and cruel'. One More Kilometre is a lovely blend of personal anecdote, serious history and informed obsession, combining gentle humour, personal reminiscence and good history into a beguiling whole.

This is the second and final volume of Tim Hilton's acclaimed life of John Ruskin, one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the nineteenth century. Ruskin was the most prolific English writer there has ever been. His published works alone number some 250 titles, and this is besides lectures, diaries, and tens of thousands of letters that remain unpublished. This is the first biography of Ruskin to return to the original source material, some of which has been read for the first time since being written, by the author. It begins in 1859 with Ruskin, famous as the author of 'Modern Painters', 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' and 'The Stones of Venice', living in south London with his parents, his disastrous marriage over, continuing to write and travel and to tutor, amongst other pupils, Rose La Touche, a girl of ten, with whom he slowly fell in love. This relationship would develop into one of the saddest love affairs of literary history ending in tragedy in 1875, and from which Ruskin would never recover.From 1875 onwards Ruskin was plagued by bouts of insanity and despair that would lead to total breakdown for the last ten years of his life, but, as Hilton shows, the later years, far from being a period merely of decline, were a time when the great man's intellect and imagination reached new heights. It was in these years that Ruskin produced 'Praeterita' and most of 'Fors Clavigera' - the series of monthly letters to British workers which Hilton discusses in the context of the writer's life. Ruskin's versatility was astonishing. He could be instigating plans for draining slum marshland on the outskirts of Oxford or setting up the philanthropic 'Guild of St George', or he was adding to his extensive collections of minerals or paintings (particularly Turners) or literary manuscripts. As Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford he founded his drawing schools, today the Ruskin School of Art. His books and lectures were on subjects ranging from history of art to social reform to botany. Hilton gives a magisterial and moving account of this brilliant and creative mind and shows Ruskin to have been the most eloquent and radical of all the great Victorian writers.Tim Hilton has taught painting and history of art in several British art schools and universities. His previous books include 'The Pre-Raphaelites', 'Picasso', and 'The Sculpture of Phillip King'. He has written the catalogues of a number of exhibitions, including 'Drawings by Miro' (1980), 'Picasso's Picassos' (1982) and 'Anthony Caro' (1984). Former art critic for the 'Guardian' and the 'Independent on Sunday', his 'John Ruskin: The Early Years' was published in 1985 and remains available today.