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The Face of Britain: The Nation through Its Portraits
Simon Schama
€ 21.99
€ 16.54
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Description for The Face of Britain: The Nation through Its Portraits
Paperback. Num Pages: 632 pages, 100 full colour pictures. BIC Classification: 1DBK; ACB; AGHF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 147 x 230 x 47. Weight in Grams: 1212.
Simon Schama brings Britain to life through its portraits, as seen in the five-part BBC series The Face of Britain and the major National Portrait Gallery exhibition Churchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a black Othello in the nineteenth century; the poet-artist Rossetti trying to capture on canvas what he couldn't possess in life; a surgeon-artist making studies of wounded faces brought in from the Battle of the Somme; a naked John Lennon five hours before his death. In the age of the hasty glance and the selfie, Simon Schama has written a tour de force about the long exchange of looks from which British portraits have been made over the centuries: images of the modest and the mighty; of friends and lovers; heroes and working people. Each of them - the image-maker, the subject, and the rest of us who get to look at them - are brought unforgettably to life. Together they build into a collective picture of Britain, our past and our present, a look into the mirror of our identity at a moment when we are wondering just who we are. Combining his two great passions, British history and art history, for the first time, Schama's extraordinary storytelling reveals the truth behind the nation's most famous portrayals of power, love, fame, the self, and the people. Mesmerising in its breadth and its panache, and beautifully illustrated, with more than 150 images from the National Portrait Gallery, The Face of Britain will change the way we see our past - and ourselves.
Product Details
Publisher
Viking
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Number of Pages
632
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780670922307
SKU
V9780670922307
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-99
About Simon Schama
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and the prize-winning author of seventeen books, including The Embarrassment of Riches, Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, the History of Britain trilogy and The Story of the Jews. He is a contributing editor of the Financial Times and his award-winning television work as writer and presenter for the BBC includes the fifteen-part A History of Britain and the eight-part, Emmy-winning Power of Art.
Reviews for The Face of Britain: The Nation through Its Portraits
Splendid... seething with ideas. Schama brings great intimacy and authority to proceedings
New York Times Book Review
Dazzling, beyond praise
Sunday Times on 'Citizens'
Schama writes with grace and wit, and his enthusiasms are contagious
Anita Brookner on 'The Embarrassment of Riches'
Shows Schama at his best . . . as full of memorable incident as a Bellow novel and wittier than a Woody Allen movie
The Times on 'The Story of the Jews'
Splendid, spirited, immensely enjoyable and wide-ranging
Financial Times on 'The Story of the Jews'
With Schama you look at a picture and see it as you hadn't before
Telegraph on 'Rembrandt's Eyes'
Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict
Financial Times on 'A History of Britain'
Inspiring ... Schama tells it with panache, weaving facts and anecdotes into a vivid history.
Observer on 'The Story of the Jews'
Viewers of his TV shows know what a passionate presenter of his subject - art history - Simon Schama is. He button-holes your eye on his inward voyage of imagination. He does it as compulsively on the page as on screen ... I welcome back in this book history as people - people whose characters can be read in their fascinating faces.
Peter Lewis
Daily Mail
He is both an inspired communicator of detail and context, an excitable and exciting critic and a sleeve-tugging gossip. The idea of portraiture is a perfect vehicle for his detailed imagination...the subjects of the portraits become uncannily alive.
Tim Adams
The Observer
Some of the best writing on British portraiture I have read.
Bendor Grosvenor
Financial Times
Rich in its variety of subjects ... poignantly memorable
Martin Gayford
Telegraph
Wonderfully compelling ... what this book, full of unhackneyed paintings and unfamiliar stories, shows is that when Schama is at his best he can see straight through people.
Michael Prodger
The Times
He has animated our portraits superlatively. One of our most in-demand public intellectuals has deftly ventriloquised his talking heads.
Stephen Smith
Evening Standard
Simon Schama's richly illustrated history of Britain in portraits is a work of dazzling panache ... a book to devour.
John Carey
Sunday Times
All of these lives rendered with an acuity of detail that could rival the best of portraitists ... describing Lawrence's portrait of Wilberforce, Schama calls the painting a work of transforming empathy . That phrase could be true of his storytelling throughout this book.
Ekow Eshun
The Independent
He knows the history, the biography, and the art history...he made me look and learn. He is a great storyteller and we learn something new on every page.
A S Byatt
New Statesman
Schama's greatest gift is a sure eye for an extraordinary story...This isn't what you get from conventional historians or conventional art writers, more's the pity...Schama has written books which will still be bought and talked about a century from now and he hasn't lost an ounce of zest or intelligence. Damn him...
Andrew Marr
Prospect
New York Times Book Review
Dazzling, beyond praise
Sunday Times on 'Citizens'
Schama writes with grace and wit, and his enthusiasms are contagious
Anita Brookner on 'The Embarrassment of Riches'
Shows Schama at his best . . . as full of memorable incident as a Bellow novel and wittier than a Woody Allen movie
The Times on 'The Story of the Jews'
Splendid, spirited, immensely enjoyable and wide-ranging
Financial Times on 'The Story of the Jews'
With Schama you look at a picture and see it as you hadn't before
Telegraph on 'Rembrandt's Eyes'
Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict
Financial Times on 'A History of Britain'
Inspiring ... Schama tells it with panache, weaving facts and anecdotes into a vivid history.
Observer on 'The Story of the Jews'
Viewers of his TV shows know what a passionate presenter of his subject - art history - Simon Schama is. He button-holes your eye on his inward voyage of imagination. He does it as compulsively on the page as on screen ... I welcome back in this book history as people - people whose characters can be read in their fascinating faces.
Peter Lewis
Daily Mail
He is both an inspired communicator of detail and context, an excitable and exciting critic and a sleeve-tugging gossip. The idea of portraiture is a perfect vehicle for his detailed imagination...the subjects of the portraits become uncannily alive.
Tim Adams
The Observer
Some of the best writing on British portraiture I have read.
Bendor Grosvenor
Financial Times
Rich in its variety of subjects ... poignantly memorable
Martin Gayford
Telegraph
Wonderfully compelling ... what this book, full of unhackneyed paintings and unfamiliar stories, shows is that when Schama is at his best he can see straight through people.
Michael Prodger
The Times
He has animated our portraits superlatively. One of our most in-demand public intellectuals has deftly ventriloquised his talking heads.
Stephen Smith
Evening Standard
Simon Schama's richly illustrated history of Britain in portraits is a work of dazzling panache ... a book to devour.
John Carey
Sunday Times
All of these lives rendered with an acuity of detail that could rival the best of portraitists ... describing Lawrence's portrait of Wilberforce, Schama calls the painting a work of transforming empathy . That phrase could be true of his storytelling throughout this book.
Ekow Eshun
The Independent
He knows the history, the biography, and the art history...he made me look and learn. He is a great storyteller and we learn something new on every page.
A S Byatt
New Statesman
Schama's greatest gift is a sure eye for an extraordinary story...This isn't what you get from conventional historians or conventional art writers, more's the pity...Schama has written books which will still be bought and talked about a century from now and he hasn't lost an ounce of zest or intelligence. Damn him...
Andrew Marr
Prospect