Ghastly Good Taste

Ghastly Good Taste

Author: John Betjeman

Publisher: London : Blond

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13:

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Written when Betjeman was 26 and criticised by the author himself in this edition for showing "sententiousness, arrogance and sweeping generalisation." Includes a potted autobiography of his early years showing how he came to write such a book.


Summoned by Bells

Summoned by Bells

Author: John Betjeman

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 9780719522208

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Tells the story of a boy's growth to early manhood, seaside holidays, meddling arts, school bullies and an unexpected moment of religious awakening.


Cecil Beaton at Home

Cecil Beaton at Home

Author: Andrew Ginger

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2016-10-25

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0847848779

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A private view of the genius of Cecil Beaton, reflected through the lens of his town and country idylls, and his passion for interior design, gardening, and entertaining a circle of Bright Young Things. Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) was one of twentieth-century Britain’s Renaissance men: photographer, costume designer, set designer, playwright, creator of fashion fabrics, and writer on raffiné interiors and the personalities who inhabited them. He also happened to be a fine interior decorator. Cecil Beaton at Home focuses on two homes dear to Beaton’s heart—Ashcombe House, near the Wiltshire village of Tollard Royal, and Reddish House, located in Broad Chalke, another village in the same county—as well as London's Pelham Place and Beaton’s New York hotel suites. Simultaneously a retreat, an inspiration, a photographer’s studio, and a stage for impressive entertaining, Beaton’s country homes also fueled his passion for art, gardening, and delight in village life. Against his often-extravagant interiors, Beaton’s private life unfolds—his unique talent for self-promotion, desire for theatricality, and uncertain pursuit of love. This lavishly illustrated visual biography brings together original photographs, artworks, and possessions from his interiors to present an intimate picture of Beaton’s extraordinary life.


Urban Reflections

Urban Reflections

Author: Mark Tewdwr-Jones

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2011-07-20

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 184742841X

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Drawing on geographical, cinematic and photographic readings, this unique book looks at how places change, the role of planners in bringing about urban change, and the public's attitudes to that change.


Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper

Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper

Author: Alexandra Harris

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 0500778434

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Winner of the 2010 Guardian First Book Award: a groundbreaking reassessment of English cultural life in the thirties and forties. In the 1930s and 1940s, while the battles for modern art and modern society were being fought in Paris and Spain, it seemed to some a betrayal that John Betjeman and John Piper were in love with a provincial world of old churches and tea shops. Alexandra Harris tells a different story: eclectically, passionately, wittily, urgently, English artists were exploring what it meant to be alive at that moment and in England. They showed that “the modern” need not be at war with the past: constructivists and conservatives could work together, and even the Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy was beguiled into taking photos for Betjeman’s nostalgic An Oxford University Chest. A rich network of personal and cultural encounters was the backdrop for a modern English renaissance. This great imaginative project was shared by writers, painters, gardeners, architects, critics, and composers. Piper abandoned purist abstracts to make collages on the blustery coast; Virginia Woolf wrote in her last novel about a village pageant on a showery summer day. Evelyn Waugh, Elizabeth Bowen, and the Sitwells are also part of the story, along with Bill Brandt and Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious and Cecil Beaton.


Lovely Bits of Old England

Lovely Bits of Old England

Author: John Betjeman

Publisher: Aurum

Published: 2012-11-08

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1781311005

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John Betjeman began writing for the Telegraph in 1951 and continued to do so for a quarter of a century. During that time Britain underwent profound social and cultural changes. In architecture, grand Victorian edifices were pulled down to make way for gleaming brutalist monuments to the Future. In literature, a new generation of angry young men (and women) challenged convention head on. In music, pomp and circumstance gave way to the electric guitar. And in fashion, hemlines crept up. Amongst much of the population, however, such rapid change met with disquiet: a nagging sense that the New had displaced much that was wonderful in the Old. By turns eccentric, wistful and polemical, Betjeman’s writing for the Telegraph gave voice to this unease. From contemporary reviews – often refreshingly caustic – of novelists such as Ian Fleming, Nancy Mitford and J.D. Salinger, through prescient warnings about the threat posed to the English skyline by office blocks, motorways and concrete lamp-standards, to elegiac paeans to Norman churches and, of course, the gothic majesty of St Pancras station, Lovely Bits of Old England collects the very best of Betjeman’s contributions to the Telegraph for the first time. Taken together they offer a eulogy for what was lost and an impassioned defence of the past in the face of progress’s relentless onward march.


Picturing England Between the Wars

Picturing England Between the Wars

Author: Stuart Sillars

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-06

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0198828926

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A richly illustrated study of the interplay of word and image in representations of the English countryside, built environment, and domestic space during the interwar period. During the 1920s and 30s, words and pictures in print were the main way in which people received ideas and entertainment, the two working together in a great variety of forms. Many books of the twenties argued against the loss of the countryside because of suburban building. But the demand for post-war building was great and, following the lead of a government report, many books appeared that showed house designs, allowing readers to design or imagine their ownership. Book designs became attractive, helped by colourful dust jackets and internal pictures. Magazines developed individual talents and special interests for both men and women. And, at the periods close, word and image were combined to publicise the growing RAF and give advice about protecting houses from bombing. In all these, words and images worked together as a complex form of art, communication, and entertainment.


The Quest for Queen Mary

The Quest for Queen Mary

Author: James Pope-Hennessy

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1529330637

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'A delightful insight into an eclectic life' The Daily Telegraph 'Very funny and astute . . . a loathly feast for royal-watchers' Hilary Mantel, New Statesman Books of the Year 2018 'A complete delight, conjuring up, with a few sharp strokes of the pen, a mad, exotic species from a world gone by' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday 'Gloriously indiscreet . . . the best royal book ever' Harry Mount, Financial Times * * * When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years. Now published in full for the first time and edited by the highly admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers, this is a riveting, often hilarious portrait of the eccentric aristocracy of a bygone age. Giving much greater insight into Queen Mary than the official version, and including sharply observed encounters with, among others, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Duke of Gloucester, and a young Queen Elizabeth, The Quest for Queen Mary is set to be a classic of royal publishing.


Researching the Song:A Lexicon

Researching the Song:A Lexicon

Author: Shirlee Emmons

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-12-22

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0198034695

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Contains more than 2,000 entries that supply information on the mythological, historical, geographical, and literary references contained in western art song. This lexicon helps singers and accompanists enhance their performances of songs, by providing them with the background on the many references embedded in this vast repertoire.