Giles Waterfield

The wedding of Thomas, an idealistic German architect, and Irene, an English artist, brings together the Curtius and Benson families. But their new lives are soon shattered by the outbreak of war in Europe. While Irene struggles to survive in a country where she is the enemy, her sister Sophia faces the war as a nurse on the Western Front. For their brother Mark, diplomatic service sees him moving between London, Washington and Copenhagen, all the while struggling to confront his own identity.Against a backdrop of war and its aftermath relationships are tested, sacrifices are made and Irene and her siblings strive to find their place in an evolving world.

This innovative history of British art museums begins in the early 19th century. The National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London may have been at the center of activity, but museums in cities such as Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Nottingham were immensely popular and attracted enthusiastic audiences. The People’s Galleries traces the rise of art museums in Britain through World War I, focusing on the phenomenon of municipal galleries. This richly illustrated book argues that these regional museums represented a new type of institution: an art gallery for a working-class audience, appropriate for the rapidly expanding cities and shaped by liberal ideals. As their broad appeal weakened with the new century, they adapted and became more conventional. Using a wide range of sources, the book studies the patrons and the publics, the collecting policies, the temporary exhibitions, and the architecture of these institutions, as well as the complex range of reasons for their foundation.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

To celebrate the acquisition of the Tom Phillips archive, the Bodleian Library has asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, ‘ordinary’ people could afford to own their portraits. Weddings captures all the stages of the ceremony, with preparations, wedding vehicles and their various casts of people in lively scenes at church and home. Each book contains 200 images chosen with the eye of a leading artist from a visually rich vein of social history. Their covers will also feature a thematically linked painting, especially created for each title, from Tom Phillips’ signature work, A Humument.

In this brilliantly witty satire -- a bestseller in the UK -- a prestigious British museum launches an ambitious new exhibit...which quickly becomes a seasonal nightmare. Think that a day in the life of a London museum director is cold, quiet, and austere? Think again. Giles Waterfield brings a combination of intellectual comedy and knockabout farce to the subject in this story of one long day in a museum full of scandals, screw-upssand more than a few scalawags. At the beginning of "The Hound in the Left-hand Corner, " Auberon, the brilliant but troubled director of the Museum of British History, is preparing one midsummer's day for the opening of the most spectacular exhibition his museum has ever staged. The centerpiece is a painting of the intriguing Lady St. John strikingly attired as Puck, which hasn't been shown in London in a hundred years. As the day passes, the portrait arouses disquieting questions, jealousies, rivalries -- and more than a few strange affections -- in the minds of the museum staff. As guests and employees pour in, the tension rises -- and Auberon himself has the hilariously ridiculous task of keeping the peace, without losing his own sense of reality as well. For everyone who loves the farce of David Lodge and Michael Frayn, or even the "Antiques Roadshow, " the fast-paced, hilarious satire of "The Hound in the Left-hand Corner" is sure to delight and entertain.