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      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        September 2024

        Bedsit land

        The strange worlds of Soft Cell

        by Patrick Clarke

        A rich and revealing examination of the legendary pop duo Soft Cell. Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but the powerful first phase of their collaboration embraced a staggering array of sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come. In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. They lead him from the faded camp glamour of the British seaside to the dizzying thrills of the New York club scene. From transgressive student performance art to the sleaze and squalor of pre-gentrified Soho. From the glitz of British showbiz to the drug-addled chaos of post-Franco Spain. He emerges on the other side with the most in-depth, innovative and entertaining account of the duo ever written.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2023

        Wild colonial boys

        A Belfast punk story

        by Thomas Paul Burgess

        Ruefrex were one of Northern Ireland's most popular and uncompromising punk rock bands. Emerging from the Belfast street-gang culture of the late-1970s, the group, inspired by The Clash, enjoyed a turbulent, decade-long career. They played for millions on CNN and Channel 4, toured with The Pogues and recorded the controversial 'The Wild Colonial Boy', which attacked American donations to Northern Irish terrorist organisations. Throughout it all, founder member, songwriter and spokesperson Thomas Paul Burgess ensured the band remained faithful to their Protestant, working-class origins. This candid memoir takes us on a journey from the streets of Belfast to encounters with U2, Shane MacGowan, The Cure, The Fall and Seamus Heaney. From strife-torn 1970s Belfast to bohemian London, Wild colonial boys tells the story of a punk band who refused to give up and stayed true to their punk roots.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        July 2024

        Lifework

        On the autobiographical impulse in contemporary art, writing, and theory

        by Moran Sheleg

        Following the critical scepticism surrounding the notion of the 'self' as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists and writers sought to test the apparent problem posed by autobiography as both a traditional genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent emergence of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic and literary production during the late twentieth century and beyond, examining a set of diverse practices that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book's chapters connect a variety of artistic strategies that cut across medium, geography and time, uncovering how the historical marginalisation of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural and political implications in the contemporary moment and how the work of living might still relate to the work of art.

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        June 2022

        The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer

        Radicalism, resistance and rebellion

        by Gregor Gall

        Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century's iconic rock'n'roll rebels. Frontman, spokesman and chief lyricist for The Clash, Strummer played a major role in politicising a generation through some of the most powerful protest songs of the era, songs like 'White Riot', 'English Civil War' and 'London Calling'. At the heart of this protest was the struggle for social justice and equality. The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer examines Strummer's beliefs on a range of issues - alienation, exploitation, multiculturalism and humanism - analysing their credibility, influence and impact, and asking where they came from and how they developed over his lifetime. Drawing on Strummer's lyrics, various interviews and bootleg recordings, as well as interviews with friends and contemporaries like Billy Bragg, The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer takes the reader on a journey through the political influences and motivations that defined one of the UK's greatest punk icons.

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        June 2022

        The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer

        Radicalism, resistance and rebellion

        by Gregor Gall

        Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century's iconic rock'n'roll rebels. Frontman, spokesman and chief lyricist for The Clash, Strummer played a major role in politicising a generation through some of the most powerful protest songs of the era, songs like 'White Riot', 'English Civil War' and 'London Calling'. At the heart of this protest was the struggle for social justice and equality. The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer examines Strummer's beliefs on a range of issues - alienation, exploitation, multiculturalism and humanism - analysing their credibility, influence and impact, and asking where they came from and how they developed over his lifetime. Drawing on Strummer's lyrics, various interviews and bootleg recordings, as well as interviews with friends and contemporaries like Billy Bragg, The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer takes the reader on a journey through the political influences and motivations that defined one of the UK's greatest punk icons.

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        June 2022

        The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer

        Radicalism, resistance and rebellion

        by Gregor Gall

        Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century's iconic rock'n'roll rebels and radicals. He was political not just in his views and lyrics but in how he lived his day-to-day life. With Strummer as frontman, spokesman and chief lyricist, The Clash played a major role in politicising a generation, not least at the Rock Against Racism gig in 1978. The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer examines Strummer's beliefs, asking where they came from and how they developed over his lifetime. It also analyses their credibility, influence and impact. The book explores Strummer's fight against alienation, exploitation and oppression (from inequality and environmentalism to anti-militarism and anti-imperialism) and his support for multiculturalism and humanism. Strummer believed that rock'n'roll music was a cultural front in the struggle for social justice and equality. Following his cue, the book reads music and culture as a means to translate hard political messages and ideologies into more accessible forms for audiences not engaged in party politics. Drawing on Strummer's lyrics, interviews and bootleg recordings, as well as interviews with friends and contemporaries like Billy Bragg, The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer reveals Strummer's wide-ranging political influence during his punk heyday and since his death in 2002.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2022

        The wood engravers' self portrait

        The Dalziel Archive and Victorian illustration

        by Bethan Stevens

        The wood engravers' self portrait tells the story of the image-making firm Dalziel Brothers, investigating and interpreting a unique archive from the British Museum. The study takes a creative-critical approach to illustration, alongside detailed investigation of print techniques and history. Five siblings ran the wood engraving firm Dalziel Brothers: George, Edward, Margaret, John and Thomas Dalziel. Prospering through five decades of work, Dalziel became the major capitalist image makers of Victorian Britain. This book, based on AHRC-funded research, outlines the achievements of these remarkable siblings and uncovers the histories of some of the 36 unknown artisan employees that worked alongside them. Dalziel Brothers made works of global importance: illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice books, novels by Charles Dickens, and landmark Pre-Raphaelite prints, as well as other, brilliant works that are published here for the first time since their initial creation.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2022

        The wood engravers' self portrait

        The Dalziel Archive and Victorian illustration

        by Bethan Stevens

        The wood engravers' self portrait tells the story of the image-making firm Dalziel Brothers, investigating and interpreting a unique archive from the British Museum. The study takes a creative-critical approach to illustration, alongside detailed investigation of print techniques and history. Five siblings ran the wood engraving firm Dalziel Brothers: George, Edward, Margaret, John and Thomas Dalziel. Prospering through five decades of work, Dalziel became the major capitalist image makers of Victorian Britain. This book, based on AHRC-funded research, outlines the achievements of these remarkable siblings and uncovers the histories of some of the 36 unknown artisan employees that worked alongside them. Dalziel Brothers made works of global importance: illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice books, novels by Charles Dickens, and landmark Pre-Raphaelite prints, as well as other, brilliant works that are published here for the first time since their initial creation.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2022

        The wood engravers' self portrait

        The Dalziel Archive and Victorian illustration

        by Bethan Stevens

        The wood engravers' self portrait tells the story of the image-making firm Dalziel Brothers, investigating and interpreting a unique archive from the British Museum. The study takes a creative-critical approach to illustration, alongside detailed investigation of print techniques and history. Five siblings ran the wood engraving firm Dalziel Brothers: George, Edward, Margaret, John and Thomas Dalziel. Prospering through five decades of work, Dalziel became the major capitalist image makers of Victorian Britain. This book, based on AHRC-funded research, outlines the achievements of these remarkable siblings and uncovers the histories of some of the 36 unknown artisan employees that worked alongside them. Dalziel Brothers made works of global importance: illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice books, novels by Charles Dickens, and landmark Pre-Raphaelite prints, as well as other, brilliant works that are published here for the first time since their initial creation.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Joss Whedon

        by Matthew Pateman

        This book assesses Joss Whedon's contribution to US television and popular culture. Examining everything from his earliest work to his most recent tweets and activist videos, it explores his complex and contradictory roles as both cult outsider and blockbuster filmmaker. Crucially, the book insists on the wider industrial, technological, political and economic contexts that have both influenced and been influenced by Whedon, rejecting the notion of Whedon as isolated television auteur. Using key source material, with exclusive access to drafts of many of the episodes across Whedon's career, as well as unique correspondence with Whedon collaborator Jane Espenson, this book offers unparalleled access to the creative process that helped produce the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse and Firefly. Energetic, engaging and informed by detailed scholarship and theoretical rigour, the book is not just an essential addition to the study of Whedon, but a timely and important re-invigoration of television studies in general.

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography: general
        2018

        TEURA. SOPHIA YABLONSKA

        by Oksana Zabuzhko, foreword

        "TEURA. SOFIA YABLONSKA" is a project that presents an outstanding Ukrainian female photographer, writer, traveler, and film documentarian Sophia Yablonska. It combines a photo album and 3 books of traveling prose from the literary heritage of Sofia Yablonska (1907-1971) Sophia was called "Theura" - a red bird - and thus recognized as female native of the island of Bora Bora, where she was one of the first to appear with a photo and film camera. In Indochina, Egypt, Ceylon, Bali, Tahiti, New Zealand - everywhere in the world, she filmed a "live" picture of life, and not fashionable productions at that time. The photo album, which was printed in Ukrainian and French (separate versions) with the support of the UKRAINIAN CULTURAL FOUNDATION, includes her photos from a trip around the world in the 1930s. Foreword - Oksana Zabuzhko (Kyiv) Photos from the archive of Natalie Udin, Yablonska's granddaughter (Paris) Biography: Veronika Khomenyuk and Andrii Benytskyi (Lviv) Photo captions: Natalka Beshta (Bangkok) Selection of illustrations and design (almost curators): Maria Norazyan and Ilya Pavlov, Grafprom studio (Kharkiv) Project manager: Lidia Likhach"

      • Trusted Partner
        Memoirs
        2019

        Kazimir Malevich. Kyiv Aspect

        by Tetyana Filevska

        Kazimir Malevich. Kyiv Aspect' is an anthology that contains 18 researches on Malevich’s Kyiv period, his first 17 years living in Ukraine, his time of teaching at Kyiv Art Institute and his artworks of that time; parallel comparisons of Malevich’s style and his relationships with his contemporary artists, new biographical studies, etc. Some of the most respected Ukrainian and international Malevich researchers (Jean-Claude Marcadé, Christina Lodder, Irina Vakar, Myroslava M. Mudrak, Iwona Luba, Aleksandr Lisov, Dmytro Horbachov, Tetyana Filevska, Serhii Pobozhii, Ostap Kovalchuk, Yaryna Tsymbal) are among the authors of this volume. Published by RODOVID and 'Malevich Institute' NGO

      • Trusted Partner
        Diaries, letters & journals
        2020

        Narbut. Studies. Memoirs. Letters [A Supplemented Reproduction of the "Narbut Anthology", destroyed in 1933]

        by Bohdan Zavitii (compiler)

        This story behind this biographical memoir of a great artist begins before Narbut’s death. The best-known experts were invited to participate and contribute articles, which they spent many years preparing. But the Soviet censors “trimmed” the texts to their liking. When it was finally published in 1933, nearly all the authors had been repressed or executed. The anthology went under the knife at the printing press. It was a shame, too, because the paper was beautiful, specially allotted by the state printing press, as was the print. Only two incomplete copies remain, both in private collections. Serhii Bilokin first proposed the idea of the Narbut Anthology to Rodovid Press ten years ago, and now it is finally came to fruition with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. This is thanks to Bohdan Zavitii, Anastasia Bilousova, and entire project team including designers Sasha Bychenko, Oleksii Salnykov, and Alina Bielova. The Institute of Art History, Folklore, and Ethnology, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Kharkiv Art Museum, and others assisted with the illustrations and texts. Heorhii Narbut was a decisive figure in twentieth-century Ukrainian art, yet the Communist taboos of the Soviet period ensured he remained unknown to a broader audience. This unique project fleshes out a significant aspect of art history and puts certain things back where they belong. Content and introduction: Serhii Bilokin Editors: Anastasiia Bilousova and Bohdan Zavitii Design: Sasha Bychenko and Numo Team

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        July 2021

        Serhii Lyfar. The biography

        Flying under the wing of Icarus

        by Roman Bereza

        The novel depicts the life and work of the legendary Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Serhii Lyfar who, due to his talent, entered the cohort of the most outstanding artists of the world culture of the 20th century. Relying on documentary sources and biographical data, the author vividly and truthfully describes the entire era of the development of choreographic art in Europe, which is associated with the name of the great Ukrainian, who was destined to appear at the origins of the latest revival of French ballet in the last century. The reader can watch Kyiv in the first quarter and middle of the 20th century. In the novel also appears the theatrical, choreographic, and artistic life of France of that time, which was vividly reflected in the creative path of Serhiy Lyfar and received its dynamic development in unity with such notable figures as Serhiy Diaghilev, Mykhailo Fokin, Enrico Cecchetti, Matilda Kshesinska, Anna Pavlova, Olga Spesyvtseva, Tamara Karsavina, Vaclav and Bronislava Nijinsky, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Benoit, Coco Chanel, George Balanchine and a number of other famous personalities who were in the center of world culture and art.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2023

        Wild colonial boys

        A Belfast punk story

        by Thomas Paul Burgess

        Ruefrex were one of Northern Ireland's most popular and uncompromising punk rock bands. Emerging from the Belfast street-gang culture of the late-1970s, the group, inspired by The Clash, enjoyed a turbulent, decade-long career. They played for millions on CNN and Channel 4, toured with The Pogues and recorded the controversial 'The Wild Colonial Boy', which attacked American donations to Northern Irish terrorist organisations. Throughout it all, founder member, songwriter and spokesperson Thomas Paul Burgess ensured the band remained faithful to their Protestant, working-class origins. This candid memoir takes us on a journey from the streets of Belfast to encounters with U2, Shane MacGowan, The Cure, The Fall and Seamus Heaney. From strife-torn 1970s Belfast to bohemian London, Wild colonial boys tells the story of a punk band who refused to give up and stayed true to their punk roots.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2023

        Wild colonial boys

        A Belfast punk story

        by Thomas Paul Burgess

        Ruefrex were one of Northern Ireland's most popular and uncompromising punk rock bands. Emerging from the Belfast street-gang culture of the late-1970s, the group, inspired by The Clash, enjoyed a turbulent, decade-long career. They played for millions on CNN and Channel 4, toured with The Pogues and recorded the controversial 'The Wild Colonial Boy', which attacked American donations to Northern Irish terrorist organisations. Throughout it all, founder member, songwriter and spokesperson Thomas Paul Burgess ensured the band remained faithful to their Protestant, working-class origins. This candid memoir takes us on a journey from the streets of Belfast to encounters with U2, Shane MacGowan, The Cure, The Fall and Seamus Heaney. From strife-torn 1970s Belfast to bohemian London, Wild colonial boys tells the story of a punk band who refused to give up and stayed true to their punk roots.

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Family Romance

        John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers

        by Jean Strouse

        A glittering account of John Singer Sargent's relationship with an eminent Edwardian family. In Family Romance, Jean Strouse tells the story of John Singer Sargent and his relationship with the Wertheimer family, structured around the twelve portraits he painted of them between 1898 and 1908. Asher Wertheimer was a London art dealer of German-Jewish descent. A prominent figure of the Edwardian age, he was at ease among Rothschilds, royals, journalists and aristocrats. In commissioning Sargent to paint a series of portraits of his family, he became the American expatriate artist's most important patron, as well as a close personal friend. Recreating the world of turn-of-the-century London, Strouse gives a dramatic account of these extraordinary lives, a tale that encompasses intrigue, tragedy and resounding success. At the same time she traces the decline of the British aristocracy and the rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic, a transformation that Sargent captured brilliantly in his art.

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Family Romance

        John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers

        by Jean Strouse

        A glittering account of John Singer Sargent's relationship with an eminent Edwardian family. In Family Romance, Jean Strouse tells the story of John Singer Sargent and his relationship with the Wertheimer family, structured around the twelve portraits he painted of them between 1898 and 1908. Asher Wertheimer was a London art dealer of German-Jewish descent. A prominent figure of the Edwardian age, he was at ease among Rothschilds, royals, journalists and aristocrats. In commissioning Sargent to paint a series of portraits of his family, he became the American expatriate artist's most important patron, as well as a close personal friend. Recreating the world of turn-of-the-century London, Strouse gives a dramatic account of these extraordinary lives, a tale that encompasses intrigue, tragedy and resounding success. At the same time she traces the decline of the British aristocracy and the rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic, a transformation that Sargent captured brilliantly in his art.

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