Difference between revisions of "Newest Art Reviews"

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[[Category:New Reviews|Art]] [[Category:Art|*]]__NOTOC__ <!-- remove -->
[[Category:New Reviews|Art]]
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{{Frontpage
[[Category:Art|*]]
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|isbn=0957181167
__NOTOC__ <!-- remove -->
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|title=Blue Skies and Boat Trips: The Norfolk of Brian Lewis
{{newreview
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|author=Alan Marshall
|author=Julia Blackburn
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|rating=5
|title=Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske
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|genre=Art
|rating=4.5
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|summary=There are few positive things which can be said about a substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time, in trying to avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a couple of pictures on the walls - and was completely taken by the work of Brian LewisI searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was ‘not available’Oh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and a framed print of the picture I wanted.
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=John Craske was a fisherman, from a family of fishermen, who became too ill to go to sea.  He was born in Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast in 1881 and would eventually die in the Norwich hospital in 1943 after a life which could have been defined by ill healthThere were various explanations for what ailed him, what caused him to sink into a stupour, sometimes for years at a time and he was on occasions described as 'an imbecile'But John had a natural artistic talent, albeit that his work had to be done on the available surfaces in his home.  Chair seats, window sills, the backs of doors all carried his wonderful pictures of the sea.  Then he moved on to embroidery, producing wonderful pictures of the Norfolk coast - and, most famously, of the evacuation at Dunkirk.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099582198</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jo Manton, Phyllis Bray and David Buckman
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|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)
|title=Titania and Oberon
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|title=Red is My Heart
|rating=4.5
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|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Equus'', ''Waiting for Godot'' and ''A Mid-summer Night's Dream'' – three very distinctive plays, and my favourite three, out of which you won't often get me choosing just one. But were I to do so, it might actually be the last, for the simple reason I would delight in playing any and all characters from it. Yes, I know Hermia and Helena look a bit implausible now – but I put it to you stranger things happen on stage…  Some of the strangest things involve a player himself, a lowly actor who gets given an ass's head and is forced to be the enamoured of a fairy queen. It's this section of the play that this book concentrates on, in quite stunning form.
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|summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184365329X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1913547183
 
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}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=The British Museum
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|isbn=1912242052
|title=Origami, Poems and Pictures
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|title=O Joy for me!
|rating=5
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|author=Keir Davidson
|genre=Crafts
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|rating=3
|summary=Sometimes you find a delight of a book.  On an afternoon when it was unseasonably cold and decidedly wet I discovered ''Origami, Poems and Pictures'' and I was transported to Japan.  As the title suggests we're looking at three celebrated arts and crafts: the ancient art of paper folding, haiku poetry and painting.  I'll confess that it was the origami which caught my attention, but I was surprised by the extent to which the rest of the book caught my imaginationWe begin with something very simple: a boat and in case you're worried, all the entries have a degree of difficulty (from 'simple' through to 'tricky') and this one is at the lowest level.
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|genre=Art
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857639382</amazonuk>
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|summary=''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventureHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Michael Foreman
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|isbn=1980891117
|title=Travels With My Sketchbook
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|title=G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart
|rating=4
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|author=John Webley
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Art
 
|genre=Art
|summary=I guess the best children's literature can do away with complete veracity, as long as it has something about it that is recognisable – a little of the spirit, heart and character of the real thing, whatever it may be. And if that's the case then it definitely applies to children's literature illustrations, such as those provided close on two hundred times by [[:Category:Michael Foreman|Michael Foreman]].  This prolific artist leapt at a scholarship in the US when he'd completed his official, formal studies, and it would appear – huge credits list regardless – that he's never stopped moving since, as this book takes us to all corners of the world, and back home again.
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|summary=George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783704721</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Graham and Stephen Biesty
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|isbn=Hewitt_Renoir
|title=Stephen Biesty's Trains
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|title=Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon
|rating=5
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|author=Catherine Hewitt
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Art
 
|genre=Art
|summary=Trains look imposing, but true fans (little boys, usually from about three years old and upwards) want to know what lies beneath the skin which you can see.  They want to know how it works.  Getting to grips with one in real life is quite a big ask, but the next best thing is ''Stephen Biesty's Trains'' which features trains from all over the world and spanning the early steam train (complete with cow catcher) right through to the trains of the future which can reach a speed of 430 kph and don't even run on rails. Once the train reaches a speed of 150 kph the wheels are raised and the train is held up by magnetic forces alone.
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|summary=Deep in the rural parts of France in the 1860s, you would never really expect to find someone who would come to embody a full artistic period – and not just a movement at that, but a full generation of both creative and societal change. And if you were to expect that someone, they would like as not be male. But almost stumbling into the hedonistic culture of Montmartre came Marie-Clementine Valadon. She started in the circus that first caught her teenaged eye, although her gymnastic career was short-lived. But what she did have from that was the poise to be an appealing model for some seriously important painters and a natural beauty and figure to appeal to both them and their audiences. And what she also had, much to the surprise of many and the distaste of some, was artistic talent of her own…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783704241</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Laura Cumming
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|isbn=Murakami_Music
|title= The Vanishing Man - In Search of Velazquez
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|title=Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa
|rating=5
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|author=Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Art
 
|genre=Art
|summary=Pitching up at an auction and picking up a lost masterpiece for a pittance is the dream for most art lovers. That seemingly happy circumstance happened to bookseller John Snare at a sale in 1845 and is the centrepiece to Laura Cumming's excellent ''The Vanishing Man – In Pursuit of Velazquez''.  
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|summary=Murakami loves music, any reader of his could tell you as much. Norwegian Wood was named after a Beatles song (albeit one not very well known) and After Dark is framed by a music soundtrack in a brilliant display of atmospheric setting. With this, all that love is here. And like all who have a good taste in music, Murakami's is eclectic and very well considered. I found myself looking up musicians after reading this because I found many of his opinions quite convincing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587041</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Siri Hustvedt
 
|title= A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Politics and Society
 
|summary= I must confess that ''A Woman Looking'' spoke to me on a profound, intimate level. This is in part due to the apparent similarities between me and Siri Hustvedt - we are both feminists who love art and also love science in a world which emphasises that these two passions are mutually exclusive. What Hustvedt suggests in ''A Woman Looking'' is that it is the similarities between these two areas we should emphasise and that a cohesive, inclusive approach towards art and science could help fill the gaps in both disciplines.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473638895</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kate Prendergast
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|isbn=Ravilious_Recent
|title=Dog on a Digger: The Tricky Incident
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|title=The Recent Past
 +
|author=James Ravilious
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
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|genre=Art
|summary=I'm going to tell you a story about Dog, Man, Lady and the Pup.  They all work on an industrial site - in fact Dog and Man live there in a caravan and Man drives the sort of digger which is dreamed about by boys large and small.  Lady and the Pup run the snack bar and one day as they're all having something to eat, the Pup goes missing.  Man and Lady search everywhere but it's Dog's sharp ears which finally track him down - caught in a branch over a fast-flowing stream. And it's Dog who works out how to rescue him.  I needed 88 words to tell you that story, but Kate Prendergast does it without using  a single one - and she tells it in a far more engaging way than I could ever manage.
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|summary=James, son of the war artist Eric Ravilious, inherited his father's artistic talents. Although he was a gifted painter, his main career was to be as a photographer.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910646148</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Will Jones
 
|title= How to Read New York: A Crash Course in Big Apple Architecture
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Travel
 
|summary=New York is home to some of the most iconic and instantly-recognisable pieces of architecture in the world. The city is a mishmash of architectural styles, a place where Classical and Colonial meet Renaissance and Modernist. The result is a glorious fusion that works perfectly and upon closer inspection has a plethora of secrets just waiting to be revealed. Welcome to New York...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782404104</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=@dogsofinstagram
 
|title=Dogs on Instagram
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Pets
 
|summary=I'm a sucker for dogs: I can't walk past one in the street without stopping and having a conversation, sometimes without bothering to speak to the owners, so a book of pictures of dogs was going to be right up my street.  The wildly popular @dogs_of_instagram, run by Ahmed El Shourbagy and his wife Ashley and launched just four years ago gives us this book of over four hundred photographs of dogs.  Originally I had ''no'' intention of reviewing it: in fact I wasn't even intending to read the book, just to have a quick flick through, but within five minutes I was showing other people in the office the picture of the Weimaraner riding a bicycle.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1452151970</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Catherine Hickley
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|isbn=Wood_Gothic
|title=The Munich Art Hoard: Hitler's Dealer and His Secret Legacy
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|title=American Gothic: The Life of Grant Wood
 +
|author=Susan Wood and Ross MacDonald
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Art
|summary=One of the most newsworthy events in modern art history happened seemingly by chance.  When tax police raided the house of an aged man in Munich it was because they assumed he had been moving too much money about and paying no tax – this six months after he was seen on the train between Bavaria and Switzerland with 'nearly too much' cash.  The investigators had no case, but he had something much more complex and rich – a massive legacy of 20th Century German and European art.  But that collection had to have an origin – one of dubious and at times nefarious beginnings, and one that could have quite a rich and convoluted background.  Hickley, in these pages, gives us much in the way of context as well as ironing out those convolutions, so this story is both of interest to Nazi historians and art scholars – as well as to those larger numbers who just like a good story told well.
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|summary=Who won a national prize for a crayon drawing of three oak leaves before he was properly in his teens? Who sought acclaim as an artist and came to Europe to study from the greats, only to reject all they had to offer? Who instinctively knew a picture of his dentist (yes, his dentist) would be more appealing and say more to people than floating water lilies and frilly ballet dancers? The answer in all cases was Grant Wood, practically the most well-known painter in America at one time, and still the best, alongside Edward Hopper, at presenting his world minus any Modernist trappings.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0500292574</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Wade Graham
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|isbn=V&A_Patchwork
|title=Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World
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|title=Patchwork and Quilting: A Maker's Guide
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|author=Victoria and Albert Museum
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre= History
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|genre=Art
|summary=Between 1950 and 2014 the world's urban population increased from 746 million to 3.9 billion. The urbanising trend is set to continue with the United Nations predicting that by the middle of the century 66% of us will be city dwellers, a massive six billion people. How have city planners and architects tried to cope with the recent surge? How can they avoid repeating mistakes from the past? Both of those questions are considered in Dream Cities – Seven Urban Ideas That Shape The World, Wade Graham's excellent field guide to the modern world.  
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|summary=Patchwork is a magical craft: you can take relatively small pieces of material and turn them into another piece of material with an entirely different pattern. Quilting converts a topper and a backing fabric with some wadding in between into a fabric of an entirely different weight. Combine the two crafts and you have something more than magical, occasionally fashionable but always deeply satisfying. But where to start, when there are so many different styles of both crafts? One answer is to read ''Patchwork and Quilting: A Maker's Guide'' which looks - as the cover says - at styles from Italian trapunto to Korean jogakbo and then delivers fifteen projects inspired by the V&A collections.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445659735</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paul Jarvis
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|isbn=Rutherford_Landscape
|title=Mapping the Airways
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|title=Landscape Gardens
|rating=4.5
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|author=Sarah Rutherford
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=Art
 
|genre=Art
|summary=Before I start, there is nothing wrong with being an anally retentive trainspottery typeHaving said that, do you see what on the front cover of this first edition marks this book out as being completely and utterly for the trainspottery type? It is the fact that the foreword is both credited, and datedYes, unless a major change was imminent and the Executive Chairman of BA was going to be someone else within weeks, this book gladly states that March 2016 was when he put finger to laptop and came up with his page-long contributionHave you ever known such attention to detail? I guess it's to be expected, when the book concerns such a singular entity as the visual history of charts and maps as used by the airlines that became British Airways.
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|summary=My first experience of a ''big'' garden was Versailles as a teenager and whilst I was impressed, I didn't really like itI felt stifled and strangely underwhelmed by the flatness of it all.  As luck would have it I then saw Hampton Court and it was official: I was off big gardens. It would be many years before I revised my opinionOn a trip to Harewood House, it was too hot a day to be corralled into the house, so I wandered the gardens and found they were delightfulI felt uplifted. Then a cricket match at Stowe gave me the opportunity to walk the grounds for over an hour. I was completely won over and a devotee of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. Sarah Rutherford's ''Landscape Gardens'' was an opportunity to put him in context.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445654644</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Matt Sewell
 
|title=Penguins and Other Sea Birds
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Animals and Wildlife
 
|summary=I've always been fascinated by Penguins: I think it's because they look so ''smart'' and striking, yet survive in extreme conditions, so the opportunity to review a book which contains fifty penguins and other seabirds was too good to miss.  Just the pictures would have been enough - the minimalist watercolours of street artist and ornithologist Matt Sewell - but Sewell's whimsical wit and ability to teach without being preachy makes this a book to treasure.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785032224</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=David P Colley
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|isbn=Barrie_Peter
|title=Seeing the War: The Stories Behind the Famous Photographs from World War II
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|title=Peter Pan and Wendy
 +
|author=J M Barrie and Robert Ingpen
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Art
|summary=As anybody could tell, a still photograph is only part of the truth, if that. There is a beforehand we don't see, and an after we can only fantasise about unless we know otherwise.  Take the famous image of wartime grunts pushing the flag pole upright – an icon of the War in the Pacific for the US soldiers, and the films made about Iwo Jima since. But other images of the war have been just as long-lasting, and the people in the photos don't always have movies made of their full story arc.  This book is a collection of the images, and a corrective to that narrative lack, giving much more of a full biography with which to pay tribute.
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|summary=It's a childhood staple - the story of Wendy, John and Michael Darling and their beloved nurse, Nana the Newfoundland dog who took them to school each day. It's George Darling, their father, who makes the mistake when he locks Nana in the yard and the children are whisked away to Neverland by Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. There's a wonderful mix of characters, from Peter Pan, the boy who never wants to grow up, Tinkerbell, the rather unpleasant fairy, Captain Hook, Tiger Lily, the lost boys and - of course - Wendy, but then it wouldn't have been a classic since the original stage production in 1904 and the novel of 1911 if it were otherwise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1611687268</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Isabel Sanchez Vegara and Eng Gee Fan
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|isbn=Grahame_Wind
|title=Little People, Big Dreams: Frida Kahlo
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|title=The Wind in The Willows
 +
|author=Kenneth Grahame and Robert Ingpen
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Emerging Readers
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|genre=Art
|summary=Frida Kahlo was born in MexicoWhen she was a young schoolgirl she contracted polio and was left with a leg which was ''skinny as a rake'', but she bore the problem stoically and in some ways delighted in being different.  Then one day Frida was in a bus which crashed into a car. She was badly injured and even when she was over the worst she still had to rest in bed and filled the time by drawing pictures, including a self portrait.  Eventually she showed her pictures to a famous artist - Diego Rivera - who liked the pictures, ''and'' Frida.  They married and Rivera encouraged Frida's painting. She exhibited, eventually in New York, to great acclaim.
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|summary=Kenneth Grahame's ''The Wind in the Willows'' was one of the defining books of my childhood and more than sixty years after I first read the book I've just recently passed it onto another young readerSince the book was first published in 1908 there have been some notable illustrators: Paul Bransom provided illustrations for the 1913 edition, Ernest H Shepard (perhaps better known for his illustrations of ''Winnie the Pooh'') in 1933, Arthur Rackham (possibly the leading illustrator from the golden age of book illustration) in 1940 and Robert Ingpen who illustrated the centenary edition of ''The Wind in the Willows''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847807704</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Jackie Morris
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|isbn=Jenkins_100
|title= The Wild Swans
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|title=Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations
|rating= 5
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|author=Simon Jenkins
|genre= Confident Readers
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|rating=5
|summary= The most well known version of the wild swans is probably the one penned by Hans Andersen.  This extended retelling by Jackie Morris adds depth, emotional resonance and a number of new twists to the tale. As in most versions, Eliza and her brothers live a happy and privileged life until their father's remarriage brings jealousy, mistrust and trouble in its wake. The brothers are magically changed into wild swans and it is up to brave Eliza to rescue them.  
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|genre=Art
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847805361</amazonuk>
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|summary=In the mid-twentieth century, the railway was something which harked back to the Victorian age with trains being supplanted by cars and planes, but steam was being replaced by oil, even then and in the twenty-first-century oil is giving way to electricity. It's cleaner, more environmentally friendly and the stations which we'd all rushed through as quickly as possible, keen to escape their grime, were restored and became places to be admired, possibly even lingered in. Simon Jenkins has chosen his hundred best railway stations.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Stephen Hickman
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|isbn=Hurst_Norfolk
|title= The Art of Stephen Hickman
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|title=On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks
|rating= 4
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|author=John Hurst
|genre= Fantasy
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|rating=4
|summary= Stephen Hickman has been a well known artist in the Fantasy and Science Fiction worlds for a number of years now, having created covers for authors such as Harlan Ellison, Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, and Larry Niven. His paintings are vibrant, kinetic, sometimes scary, often sensual, traditional, and yet modern. ''The Art of Stephen Hickman'' collects hundreds of these paintings, and the artist himself provides an intriguing commentary alongside which offers a fascinating glimpse into the artistic process.  
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|genre=Art
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783298456</amazonuk>
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|summary=It was pure serendipity: after a five-hour drive, we were, annoyingly, left with an hour to fill in Blakeney before we could have the keys to our holiday cottage. There was an art exhibition in the church hall, so we went in - and found a display of the most gorgeous pictures.  I'd cheerfully have bought every one and hung them on our walls, but thought that I would have to make do with a couple of greetings cards when I saw ''On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks'' and I couldn't resist buying it.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lewis Carroll, Mark Burstein (editor) and Salvador Dali
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|isbn=Blackburn_Threads
|title=Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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|title=Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske
 +
|author=Julia Blackburn
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=If you don't know the story now, then where have you been for a hundred and fifty years?  A young girl sees a hurrying white rabbit, follows it, falls down a hole, fails to recognise the 'stranger danger' in partaking of random foods and drinks just because of a label on them, nearly drowns a whole menagerie of animals in a lake of her own tears, takes advice from someone on drugs, plays cards, or croquet, or both or neither, and wakes up to find it all a dream.  Someone else tried out such gibberish on a young girl, wrote it down in a flurry, made a hugely successful name for himself, and woke up to find even at this remove that most people (unlike me) adore the thing.  But it's not just for now, its 150th birthday, that the work gets reprinted.  In the 1960s, someone came up with the idea to put the esoteric, surreal and daft mind of Salvador Dali in cahoots with the esoteric, surreal and daft world of Carroll's Alice, and the result was a very rare and valuable edition – a box set of illustrated booklets, perfectly suited to the very surrealistic 105th birthday.  Since getting sight of one is like seeing a flat clock in Dali's pictures, this decent hardback replication is the nearest you'll get to owning one of the most special of Alice editions.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0691170029</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David Hollis
 
|title=Practical Landscape Painting: Materials, Techniques & Projects
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Art
 
|genre=Art
|summary=Almost any of us can visit the countryside and capture the view in our memory or on our camera with comparatively consummate ease. However capturing it in paint is more difficult and yet something some of us (me included) dream of. It was therefore with great excitement that I picked up this compact book of seven lessons in landscape painting.  As I believe (with good evidence) that I have the artistic ability of a house brick, it would be a challenge but I also have a dream to follow.
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|summary=John Craske was a fisherman, from a family of fishermen, who became too ill to go to sea. He was born in Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast in 1881 and would eventually die in the Norwich hospital in 1943 after a life which could have been defined by ill health. There were various explanations for what ailed him, what caused him to sink into a stupor, sometimes for years at a time and he was on occasions described as 'an imbecile'. But John had a natural artistic talent, albeit that his work had to be done on the available surfaces in his home. Chair seats, window sills, the backs of doors all carried his wonderful pictures of the sea. Then he moved on to embroidery, producing wonderful pictures of the Norfolk coast - and, most famously, of the evacuation at Dunkirk.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782402802</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Dell
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|isbn=Bray Titania
|title=Mythology: An Illustrated Journey Into Our Imagined Worlds
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|title=Titania and Oberon
|rating=4.5
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|author=Jo Manton, Phyllis Bray and David Buckman
|genre=Spirituality and Religion
 
|summary=What does a rainbow mean to you?  How would you explain the creation of the world if you had no science as such, or the changing of the seasons?  What other kinds of natures – chaotic trickery, evil personae or even the characteristics of goats – people your world?  And why is it that the answers man and woman have collectively formed to such questions have been so similar across the oceans and across the centuries?  This highly pictorial volume looks at the mythologies that formed those answers, and locks on to a multitude of subjects – blood, music, godly activity – to show us what has followed.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0500291519</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jules Nilsson
 
|title=The Hounds of Falsterbo
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
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|genre=Art
|summary=''In between the beach huts''<br>
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|summary=''Equus, Waiting for Godot and A Mid-summer Night's Dream'' – three very distinctive plays, and my favourite three, out of which you won't often get me choosing just one. But were I to do so, it might actually be the last, for the simple reason that I would delight in playing any and all characters from it. Yes, I know Hermia and Helena look a bit implausible now – but I put it to you stranger things happen on stage… Some of the strangest things involve a player himself, a lowly actor who gets given an ass's head and is forced to be enamoured of a fairy queen. It's this section of the play that this book concentrates on, in quite stunning form.
''Where the white sands meet the seas,''<br>
 
''The heather meets the sand dunes''<br>
 
''And long grasses dance the breeze.''
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992708419</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paula Briggs
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|isbn=BM_Origami
|title=Drawing Projects for Children
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|title=Origami, Poems and Pictures
|rating=5
+
|author=The British Museum
|genre=Crafts
 
|summary=''Drawing Projects for Children'' is a beautiful, full-colour guide that encourages children to use a range of materials to create stunning and thought-provoking artwork. As the author points out, the end result is not always as important as the journey and this book helps children to move away from the more traditional, or 'safe' type of drawing styles and indulge in a little more experimentation and risk taking. The book is ideal for parents to use with their children, but each chapter is a self-contained lesson plan that facilitators and teachers can use with groups.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908966742</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Anna Weltman
 
|title=This is Not a Maths Book
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Art
 
|genre=Art
|summary=I have to admit, I wasn't a huge fan of maths at school. Maybe if I'd had this book when I was a child, I would have been. 'This is not a Maths Book' cleverly bridges the gap between maths and art and teaches kids how to make beautiful patterns and shapes by using mathematical principles. We learn about parabolic curves, Pascal's triangle, the stomachion, tesselation and 3D drawings. Because the pages are interactive and hands-on, kids are learning the rules of maths without realising it. After all, there is no reason why maths shouldn't be fun!
+
|summary=Sometimes you find a delight of a book. On an afternoon when it was unseasonably cold and decidedly wet I discovered ''Origami, Poems and Pictures'' and I was transported to Japan. As the title suggests we're looking at three celebrated arts and crafts: the ancient art of paper folding, haiku poetry and painting. I'll confess that it was the origami which caught my attention, but I was surprised by the extent to which the rest of the book caught my imagination. We begin with something very simple: a boat and in case you're worried, all the entries have a degree of difficulty (from 'simple' through to 'tricky') and this one is at the lowest level.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782402055</amazonuk>
+
}}'
}}
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Foreman_Travel
|author=Andrew Wilson
+
|title=Travels With My Sketchbook
|title=Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin
+
|author=Michael Foreman
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
+
|genre=Art
|summary=On the face of it Lee McQueen might not have seemed like the ideal candidate for greatness in the world of haute couture.  He was the youngest son of an East London taxi driver, but there was history in the rag trade within the family, although his father told him that if he wanted to sell clothes he should get a market stallDetermined to do it ''his'' way, Lee borrowed the money from a relative to enable him to attend Central St Martins after doing a tailoring apprenticeshipThe name 'Lee' might confuse you, but at the time McQueen began his own business he was claiming benefits and decided to use his middle name to avoid detection.
+
|summary=I guess the best children's literature can do away with complete veracity, as long as it has something about it that is recognisable – a little of the spirit, heart and character of the real thing, whatever it may beAnd if that's the case then it definitely applies to children's literature illustrations, such as those provided close on two hundred times by [[:Category:Michael Foreman|Michael Foreman]]This prolific artist leapt at a scholarship in the US when he'd completed his official, formal studies, and it would appear – huge credits list regardless – that he's never stopped moving since, as this book takes us to all corners of the world, and back home again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471131785</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Quentin Blake
+
|isbn=Biesty Trains
|title=Tell me a Picture - Adventures in Looking at Art
+
|title=Stephen Biesty's Trains
|rating=4.5
+
|author=Ian Graham and Stephen Biesty
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=When did you last read a children's book that absolutely flummoxed you in the way it showed or told you something you didn't know?  (And please be an adult when you answer that, or else it won't be quite so impressive.)  Back in 2001, Quentin Blake wasn't a Knight yet – he hadn't even got his CBE – but he did get allowed to put on his own show at the National Gallery, with other people's pictures that contain oddities, stories, unexpected detail – sparks on canvas and paper that would inspire anyone looking, of whatever age, to piece things together, work things out, ''form a narrative''.  The pictures came with no major labelling, no context – just what they held, and some typically scratched Blake characters discussing the images as a lead-in.  They were simply hung in alphabetical order, and probably could not have been more different.  This then is a picture book of the most literal kind, with 26 stories.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847806422</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David Esterly
 
|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David Esterly's seems to be an idyllic existence. Yet it's not all cosy cottages in the snow and watching geese and coyotes when he looks up from his workbench. There is an element of hard-won retreat from the trials of life in this memoir, but at the same time there is an argument for the essential difficulty of the artist's life. 'Carvers are starvers,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly there is no great fortune to be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterly.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
 
|title=A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
+
|genre=Art
|summary=It might be simplest if I begin by telling you what this book is ''not''.  It's not a book of beautiful photographs (with some supporting text) of the places you'll almost certainly want to visit if you're visiting Edinburgh as a tourist. If that's what you want then there are dozens of such books available all over the city at a fraction of the cost of ''A Work of Beauty''.  This might have the look of a coffee table book (and it would certainly look impressive there) but it has a lot more depth and interest than you might expect. This is a book of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, the city he walks around every day, constantly seeing something new, something else with a story to tell.
+
|summary=Trains look imposing, but true fans (little boys, usually from about three years old and upwards) want to know what lies beneath the skin which you can see. They want to know how it works. Getting to grips with one in real life is quite a big ask, but the next best thing is ''Stephen Biesty's Trains'' which features trains from all over the world and spanning the early steam train (complete with cowcatcher) right through to the trains of the future which can reach a speed of 430 kph and don't even run on rails. Once the train reaches a speed of 150 kph the wheels are raised and the train is held up by magnetic forces alone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1902419863</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
Move on to [[Newest Autobiography Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 12:49, 2 June 2023

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Review of

Blue Skies and Boat Trips: The Norfolk of Brian Lewis by Alan Marshall

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There are few positive things which can be said about a substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time, in trying to avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a couple of pictures on the walls - and was completely taken by the work of Brian Lewis. I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was ‘not available’. Oh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and a framed print of the picture I wanted. Full Review

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Review of

Red is My Heart by Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)

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Antoine Laurain books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas. Full Review

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Review of

O Joy for me! by Keir Davidson

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Oh Joy for me! gives Coleridge credit for being the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world. Full Review

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Review of

G Engleheart Pinxit 1805: A year in the life of George Engleheart by John Webley

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George Engleheart was one of the leading portrait miniaturists of Georgian London, with a career lasting from the 1770s to the Regency era. He was also one of the most prolific, painting nearly 5,000 miniatures altogether (over twenty of them being of King George III). Throughout most of that time he carefully recorded the names of each of his clients, and subsequently transcribed them into what is referred to as his fee book. Full Review

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Review of

Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt

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Deep in the rural parts of France in the 1860s, you would never really expect to find someone who would come to embody a full artistic period – and not just a movement at that, but a full generation of both creative and societal change. And if you were to expect that someone, they would like as not be male. But almost stumbling into the hedonistic culture of Montmartre came Marie-Clementine Valadon. She started in the circus that first caught her teenaged eye, although her gymnastic career was short-lived. But what she did have from that was the poise to be an appealing model for some seriously important painters and a natural beauty and figure to appeal to both them and their audiences. And what she also had, much to the surprise of many and the distaste of some, was artistic talent of her own… Full Review

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Review of

Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa by Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa

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Murakami loves music, any reader of his could tell you as much. Norwegian Wood was named after a Beatles song (albeit one not very well known) and After Dark is framed by a music soundtrack in a brilliant display of atmospheric setting. With this, all that love is here. And like all who have a good taste in music, Murakami's is eclectic and very well considered. I found myself looking up musicians after reading this because I found many of his opinions quite convincing. Full Review

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Review of

The Recent Past by James Ravilious

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James, son of the war artist Eric Ravilious, inherited his father's artistic talents. Although he was a gifted painter, his main career was to be as a photographer. Full Review

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Review of

American Gothic: The Life of Grant Wood by Susan Wood and Ross MacDonald

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Who won a national prize for a crayon drawing of three oak leaves before he was properly in his teens? Who sought acclaim as an artist and came to Europe to study from the greats, only to reject all they had to offer? Who instinctively knew a picture of his dentist (yes, his dentist) would be more appealing and say more to people than floating water lilies and frilly ballet dancers? The answer in all cases was Grant Wood, practically the most well-known painter in America at one time, and still the best, alongside Edward Hopper, at presenting his world minus any Modernist trappings. Full Review

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Review of

Patchwork and Quilting: A Maker's Guide by Victoria and Albert Museum

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Patchwork is a magical craft: you can take relatively small pieces of material and turn them into another piece of material with an entirely different pattern. Quilting converts a topper and a backing fabric with some wadding in between into a fabric of an entirely different weight. Combine the two crafts and you have something more than magical, occasionally fashionable but always deeply satisfying. But where to start, when there are so many different styles of both crafts? One answer is to read Patchwork and Quilting: A Maker's Guide which looks - as the cover says - at styles from Italian trapunto to Korean jogakbo and then delivers fifteen projects inspired by the V&A collections. Full Review

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Review of

Landscape Gardens by Sarah Rutherford

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My first experience of a big garden was Versailles as a teenager and whilst I was impressed, I didn't really like it. I felt stifled and strangely underwhelmed by the flatness of it all. As luck would have it I then saw Hampton Court and it was official: I was off big gardens. It would be many years before I revised my opinion. On a trip to Harewood House, it was too hot a day to be corralled into the house, so I wandered the gardens and found they were delightful. I felt uplifted. Then a cricket match at Stowe gave me the opportunity to walk the grounds for over an hour. I was completely won over and a devotee of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. Sarah Rutherford's Landscape Gardens was an opportunity to put him in context. Full Review

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Review of

Peter Pan and Wendy by J M Barrie and Robert Ingpen

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It's a childhood staple - the story of Wendy, John and Michael Darling and their beloved nurse, Nana the Newfoundland dog who took them to school each day. It's George Darling, their father, who makes the mistake when he locks Nana in the yard and the children are whisked away to Neverland by Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. There's a wonderful mix of characters, from Peter Pan, the boy who never wants to grow up, Tinkerbell, the rather unpleasant fairy, Captain Hook, Tiger Lily, the lost boys and - of course - Wendy, but then it wouldn't have been a classic since the original stage production in 1904 and the novel of 1911 if it were otherwise. Full Review

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Review of

The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Robert Ingpen

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Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows was one of the defining books of my childhood and more than sixty years after I first read the book I've just recently passed it onto another young reader. Since the book was first published in 1908 there have been some notable illustrators: Paul Bransom provided illustrations for the 1913 edition, Ernest H Shepard (perhaps better known for his illustrations of Winnie the Pooh) in 1933, Arthur Rackham (possibly the leading illustrator from the golden age of book illustration) in 1940 and Robert Ingpen who illustrated the centenary edition of The Wind in the Willows. Full Review

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Review of

Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins

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In the mid-twentieth century, the railway was something which harked back to the Victorian age with trains being supplanted by cars and planes, but steam was being replaced by oil, even then and in the twenty-first-century oil is giving way to electricity. It's cleaner, more environmentally friendly and the stations which we'd all rushed through as quickly as possible, keen to escape their grime, were restored and became places to be admired, possibly even lingered in. Simon Jenkins has chosen his hundred best railway stations. Full Review

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Review of

On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks by John Hurst

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It was pure serendipity: after a five-hour drive, we were, annoyingly, left with an hour to fill in Blakeney before we could have the keys to our holiday cottage. There was an art exhibition in the church hall, so we went in - and found a display of the most gorgeous pictures. I'd cheerfully have bought every one and hung them on our walls, but thought that I would have to make do with a couple of greetings cards when I saw On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks and I couldn't resist buying it. Full Review

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Review of

Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske by Julia Blackburn

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John Craske was a fisherman, from a family of fishermen, who became too ill to go to sea. He was born in Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast in 1881 and would eventually die in the Norwich hospital in 1943 after a life which could have been defined by ill health. There were various explanations for what ailed him, what caused him to sink into a stupor, sometimes for years at a time and he was on occasions described as 'an imbecile'. But John had a natural artistic talent, albeit that his work had to be done on the available surfaces in his home. Chair seats, window sills, the backs of doors all carried his wonderful pictures of the sea. Then he moved on to embroidery, producing wonderful pictures of the Norfolk coast - and, most famously, of the evacuation at Dunkirk. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Bray Titania/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

Titania and Oberon by Jo Manton, Phyllis Bray and David Buckman

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Equus, Waiting for Godot and A Mid-summer Night's Dream – three very distinctive plays, and my favourite three, out of which you won't often get me choosing just one. But were I to do so, it might actually be the last, for the simple reason that I would delight in playing any and all characters from it. Yes, I know Hermia and Helena look a bit implausible now – but I put it to you stranger things happen on stage… Some of the strangest things involve a player himself, a lowly actor who gets given an ass's head and is forced to be enamoured of a fairy queen. It's this section of the play that this book concentrates on, in quite stunning form. Full Review

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Review of

Origami, Poems and Pictures by The British Museum

5star.jpg Art

Sometimes you find a delight of a book. On an afternoon when it was unseasonably cold and decidedly wet I discovered Origami, Poems and Pictures and I was transported to Japan. As the title suggests we're looking at three celebrated arts and crafts: the ancient art of paper folding, haiku poetry and painting. I'll confess that it was the origami which caught my attention, but I was surprised by the extent to which the rest of the book caught my imagination. We begin with something very simple: a boat and in case you're worried, all the entries have a degree of difficulty (from 'simple' through to 'tricky') and this one is at the lowest level. Full Review

'

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Review of

Travels With My Sketchbook by Michael Foreman

4star.jpg Art

I guess the best children's literature can do away with complete veracity, as long as it has something about it that is recognisable – a little of the spirit, heart and character of the real thing, whatever it may be. And if that's the case then it definitely applies to children's literature illustrations, such as those provided close on two hundred times by Michael Foreman. This prolific artist leapt at a scholarship in the US when he'd completed his official, formal studies, and it would appear – huge credits list regardless – that he's never stopped moving since, as this book takes us to all corners of the world, and back home again. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Biesty Trains/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

Stephen Biesty's Trains by Ian Graham and Stephen Biesty

5star.jpg Art

Trains look imposing, but true fans (little boys, usually from about three years old and upwards) want to know what lies beneath the skin which you can see. They want to know how it works. Getting to grips with one in real life is quite a big ask, but the next best thing is Stephen Biesty's Trains which features trains from all over the world and spanning the early steam train (complete with cowcatcher) right through to the trains of the future which can reach a speed of 430 kph and don't even run on rails. Once the train reaches a speed of 150 kph the wheels are raised and the train is held up by magnetic forces alone. Full Review

Move on to Newest Autobiography Reviews