Louisa May Alcott is best known as the author of Little Women. But she was also a noted essayist who wrote on a wide range of subjects, including her father’s failed utopian commune, life as a Civil War nurse and her experience as a young woman sent to work in service to alleviate her family’s poverty. Blending gentle satire with reportage and emotive biography, these essays show Alcott to be one of the sharpest wits in American literature.
Taking us on a journey from the court of Louis XIV to TikTok’s avant apocalypse, Fashion: A Manifesto scrutinises fashion from a number of angles: historically, psychologically, politically, environmentally, even linguistically, to open up questions about the ways in which it works, both for and against us, and looks forward to a future where our clothes treat us – not to mention the planet – a great deal more kindly.
Todd McEwen grew up in Southern California. As the son of relatively normal people, he had no in with Hollywood, a mere thirteen miles away, try as he might. This is a kid who loved the movies so much, he got up at 4.30 in the morning to watch Laurel and Hardy. A kid who made his father project 8mm cartoons onto the family’s dining room curtains so they could be slowly parted, just like at a real cinema. A guy who based his philosophy of life on Captain Nemo, and has watched Chinatown over sixty times. So far.
Todd McEwen grew up in Southern California. As the son of relatively normal people, he had no in with Hollywood, a mere thirteen miles away, try as he might. This is a kid who loved the movies so much, he got up at 4.30 in the morning to watch Laurel and Hardy. A kid who made his father project 8mm cartoons onto the family’s dining room curtains so they could be slowly parted, just like at a real cinema. A guy who based his philosophy of life on Captain Nemo, and has watched Chinatown over sixty times. So far.
Children are a wonder – a miracle – and everyone has an opinion on how we should raise them. From novelists to paediatricians; from modern parenting ‘experts’ to child psychologists, Tiny Feet is the first anthology of its kind, showcasing a range of the most influential writing about children over the past four-hundred years. Introduced by award-winning author and illustrator Lauren Child.
Children are a wonder – a miracle – and everyone has an opinion on how we should raise them. From novelists to paediatricians; from modern parenting ‘experts’ to child psychologists, Tiny Feet is the first anthology of its kind, showcasing a range of the most influential writing about children over the past four-hundred years. Introduced by award-winning author and illustrator Lauren Child.
Winner of the 2021 Rubery Book Award. BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson (who has Bipolar Disorder himself) explores the power of Shostakovich’s music during Stalin’s reign of terror, and writes of the extraordinary healing effect of music on the mind for sufferers of mental illness.
Out of print since 1968, this is a unique guidebook from the late, great architectural writer, Ian Nairn. Illustrated with the author’s black and white snaps of the city, Nairn gives his readers an idiosyncratic and unpretentious portrait of the ‘collective masterpiece’ that is Paris.
John Berger, art critic, novelist and long-time smoker, joins forces again with Turkish writer and illustrator Selçuk Demirel. This charming pictorial essay reflects on the cultural implications of smoking, and suggests, through a series of brilliantly inventive illustrations, that society’s attitude to smoke is both paradoxical and intolerant.
