Author: Simon Raven
Publisher: House of Stratus
ISBN: 0755130014
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
A string of long-lost and cursed rubies gives the title to this highly imaginative tale. Jacquiz Helmut and Balbo Blakeney, among other eccentric characters, pursue the jewels across four countries and eight centuries. Horror, intrigue and high comedy shape the story as it races towards an unforgettable climax.
Author: Jackie Bennett
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
ISBN: 1781318751
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
The Artist’s Garden offers an intriguing study into 20 gardens that have inspired and been home to some of the greatest painters of history. The most alluring image of an artist at work is surely one where he or she has come out of their studio, set up their easel on the garden path, pulled on a hat to shade their eyes from the sun and taken their brush and palette in hand. This sumptuously illustrated and fascinating book delves into the stories behind the gardens which inspired some of the most beautiful and important works of art. These gardens not only supplied the inspiration for creative works but also illuminate the professional motivation and private life of the artists themselves – from Cezanne’s house in the south of France to Childe Hassam at Celia Thaxter’s garden off the coast off Maine. Flowers and gardens have often been the first choice for artists looking for a subject. A garden close to the artist’s studio is not only convenient for daily material and ideas, but also has the advantage of changing through the seasons and over time. Claude Monet’s Giverny was the catalyst for hundreds of great paintings (by Monet and other artists), each one different from the one before. Sometimes a whole village becomes the focus for a colony of artists as at Gerberoy in Picardy and Skagen on the northernmost tip of Denmark. This book is about the real homes and gardens that inspired these great artists – gardens that can still be visited today. The relationship between artist and garden is a complex one. A few artists, including Pierre Bonnard and his neighbour Monet were keen gardeners, as much in love with their plants as their work, while for others like Sorolla in Madrid, his courtyard home was both a sanctuary and a source of ideas. This book is as unmissable for art lovers as it is for anyone who knows the joy of time spent in gardens, offering an intriguing insight into the lives of these great painters and the gardens which inspired them to their creative heights.
Author: Justine Picardie
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374722153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
“Remarkable” —Hamish Bowles, Vogue The overdue restoration of Catherine Dior's extraordinary life, from her brother's muse to Holocaust survivor When the French designer Christian Dior presented his first collection in Paris in 1947, he changed fashion forever. Dior’s “New Look” created a striking, romantic vision of femininity, luxury, and grace, making him—and his last name—famous overnight. One woman informed Dior’s vision more than any other: his sister, Catherine, a Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and cultivator of rose gardens who inspired Dior’s most beloved fragrance, Miss Dior. Yet the story of Catherine’s remarkable life—so different from her famous brother’s—has never been told, until now. Drawing on the Dior archives and extensive research, Justine Picardie’s Miss Dior is the long-overdue restoration of Catherine Dior’s life. The siblings’ stories are profoundly intertwined: in Occupied France, as Christian honed his couture skills, Catherine dedicated herself to the Resistance, ultimately being captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck, the only Nazi camp solely for women. Seeking to trace Catherine’s story as well as her influence on her brother, Picardie traveled to the significant places of Catherine’s life, including Les Rhumbs, the Dior family villa with its magnificent gardens; the House of Dior in Paris; and La Colle Noire, Christian’s chateâu that he bequeathed to his sister. Inventive and captivating, and shaped by Picardie’s own journey, Miss Dior examines the legacy of Christian Dior, the secrets of postwar France, and the unbreakable bond between two remarkable siblings. Most important, it shines overdue recognition on a previously overlooked life, one that epitomized courage and also embodied the astonishing capacity of the human spirit to remain undimmed, even in the darkest circumstances. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations
Author: John Bremer
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739171534
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
The life and work of C.S. Lewis after his conversion in 1931 is well known and his reputation shows no signs of diminishing. His earlier years have not been so well studied, particularly between the ages of 16 and 22 when he studied privately and at Oxford, served in the British army, was wounded in France, entered into his affair with Janie Moore, and wrote and published his first book of poems. To correct and augment the limited accounts of this period, Lewis’s life is presented with the general and specific background which makes it more meaningful, particularly as it throws light on his character. The romantic myth of him as a "soldier-poet" is dispelled, largely through an extensive review of the poems in "Spirits in Bondage" and the self-centered life that produced them. A valuable comparison—not to the advantage of Lewis—is drawn with two undoubted soldier-poets, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. The purpose is not to disparage or belittle Lewis but to show what had to be overcome in his limited and unpleasant early moral character in order to produce the devoted Christian of later years.
Author: Simon Raven
Publisher: House of Stratus
ISBN: 1842321749
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
This hilarious instalment from Simon Raven's entertaining autobiography takes the reader to the four corners of the globe. A lifetime spent travelling - as a soldier and as a civilian - brought Raven into contact with an amazing selection of characters: Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood, Morgan Grenfell, plus eccentrics such as Colonel Cuthbert Smith and 'Parafit' Paradore. Army life, travels, meetings, dinners and calamities take place in Kenya, Bombay, the Red Sea, Greece and California, among other exotic locations. Wherever he is, Raven entertains us in typical style.
Author: Simon Raven
Publisher: House of Stratus
ISBN: 0755129989
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Esme is pushed into working in his summer holidays as a way of settling his college’s bills. Hired as holiday tutor, his brief is unusual. Not expected to teach anything he is there to keep his charge out of trouble. As the summer develops Esme makes his discoveries, the presence in the background of a psychiatrist being of some concern.
Author: Paul Ferstl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110641887
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 637
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Book Description
Comparative Literature is changing fast with methodologies, topics, and research interests emerging and remerging. The fifth volume of ICLA 2016 proceedings, Dialogues between Media, focuses on the current interest in inter-arts studies, as well as papers on comics studies, further testimony to the fact that comics have truly arrived in mainstream academic discourse. "Adaptation" is a key term for the studies presented in this volume; various articles discuss the adaptation of literary source texts in different target media - cinematic versions, comics adaptations, TV series, theatre, and opera. Essays on the interplay of media beyond adaptation further show many of the strands that are woven into dialogues between media, and thus the expanding range of comparative literature.
Author: Merriam-Webster, Inc
Publisher: Merriam-Webster
ISBN: 9780877790426
Category : Literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1260
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Book Description
Describes authors, works, and literary terms from all eras and all parts of the world.
Author: Simon Raven
Publisher: House of Stratus
ISBN: 0755153928
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 185
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Book Description
The sixth in the ‘First Born of Egypt’ series sees Raisley Conyngham exert a powerful influence over Marius Stern. His young pupil however is no defenceless victim. Marius has a ruthless streak and an ability to sidestep tests and traps that are laid for him. Which is just as well because everybody is after something from him.
Author: Malcolm Macdonald
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402253710
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 519
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Book Description
The gripping second novel in the classic Stevenson Family Saga from epic master Malcolm Macdonald At a time when fabulous fortunes could be made through the will of a strong man or the wiles of a beautiful woman, John Stevenson's genius as a builder and his wife Nora's clear-eyed, brilliant cunning promise to make them one of England's richest families. But as their fate becomes more and more entwined with that of their friends the Thorntons-repressed and pious Arabella and secretive, sex-obsessed Walter-whispers of scandal and disgrace threaten to bring them all to ruin. The second novel in the classic Stevenson Family Saga, The Rich Are with You Always is the epic story of two families at the height of the railroad boom, where the lives of the Victorian people rose economically and set in motion forces of passion and struggle that would define a people. "A luxuriant, wide-ranging novel... Malcolm Macdonald knows how to grip the reader..." -Boston Globe "Rich and exciting...the heir to R.F. Delderfield!" -Washington Star "For sheer storytelling it is hard to beat Malcolm Macdonald. Each separate incident is as gripping as the story as a whole [with] a scrupulous care for period detail." - W.J. Nesbitt Northern Echo "Engrosssing...a book to revel in!" -Charleston Evening Post
