{"title":"James Stourton","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"kenneth-clark-book-james-stourton-9780007493449","title":"Kenneth Clark","description":"SHORTLISTED FOR THE BERGER PRIZE FOR BRITISH ART HISTORY 2017                                     SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2017                                     A SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     A NEW YORK TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR                        From his time as Bernard Berenson’s protégé to being the Keeper of the Western Art at 27 and his appointment as the youngest-ever director of the National Gallery, Kenneth Clark displayed precocious genius. No voice has exercised so much power and influence over the arts in Britain as Clark’s. A formidable aesthete, his coterie included John Betjeman, Winston Churchill, Margot Fonteyn, E.M. Forster, Vivien Leigh, the Queen Mother and Henry Moore. Hidden from view, however, was his wife Jane’s alcoholism and his own philandering. In James Stourton’s dazzling biography, Clark is shown as a man who conveyed the profound beauty and importance of art, architecture and civilisation for generations to come.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522970427665,"sku":"GOR008807184","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50519186145553,"sku":"GOR009707865","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51102729535761,"sku":"GOR010826208","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51682331099409,"sku":"GOR010361570","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52659631194385,"sku":"NLS9780007493449","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0007493444.jpg?v=1751354374"},{"product_id":"kenneth-clark-book-james-stourton-9780007493418","title":"Kenneth Clark","description":"SHORTLISTED FOR THE BERGER PRIZE FOR BRITISH ART HISTORY 2017                                     SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2017                                     A SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR                                     A NEW YORK TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR                        From his time as Bernard Berenson’s protégé to being the Keeper of the Western Art at 27 and his appointment as the youngest-ever director of the National Gallery, Kenneth Clark displayed precocious genius. 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Clark was prescient in making this series: the upheavals of the century, the Cold War among others, convinced him of the power of barbarism and the fragility of culture. He would burnish his image with two memoirs that artfully omitted the more complicated details of his life. Now, drawing on a vast, previously unseen archive, James Stourton reveals the formidable intellect and the private man behind the figure who effortlessly dominated the art world for more than half a century: his privileged upbringing, his interest in art history beginning at Oxford, his remarkable early successes. At 27 he was keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean in Oxford and at 29, the youngest director of The National Gallery. During the war he arranged for its entire collection to be hidden in slate mines in Wales and organized packed concerts of classical music at the Gallery to keep up the spirits of Londoners during the bombing. WI helped shape his belief that art should be brought to the widest audience, a social and moral position that would inform the rest of his career. Television became a means for this message when he was appointed the first chairman of the Independent Television Authority. Stourton reveals the tortuous state of his marriage during and after the war, his wife's alcoholism, and the aspects of his own nature that he worked to keep hidden. A superb work of biography, \u003ci\u003eKenneth Clark\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelation of its remarkable subject.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49551512043793,"sku":"GOR012891633","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50571560255761,"sku":"CIN0385351178G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52940617908497,"sku":"CIN0385351178A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53196127568145,"sku":"GOR014802064","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0385351178.jpg?v=1750878347"},{"product_id":"great-collectors-of-our-time-book-james-stourton-9781857595147","title":"Great Collectors of Our Time","description":"\"Great Collectors of Our Time\" is the first major survey of contemporary collecting and collectors since Douglas Cooper's \"Great Private Collections\", published in 1963. It examines many of the greatest collectors of our time in Europe, North America and the Far East, and follows their tastes - whether in the Old Masters or the avant garde - from the 20th century into the 21st. In 1945, Paris was still the cultural capital of the world, but its culture was being increasingly challenged by America. American collecting was soon to pull up its European anchor and move across the Atlantic, in growing acceptance of America's own art, the decline in the domination of three European schools of art - Italian Renaissance, English 18th century and French 19th century Impressionism - and the rise of the New York School and contemporary art.Prior to 1939, collecting was a private pleasure, sometimes intellectual and scholarly, but more often about enhancing surroundings - 'la douceur de vivre'. Today, collecting often has a public dimension, with many collectors feeling a moral imperative to share their works of art with the public, not least when these works are on a scale far beyond that of domestic living: Saatchi, Getty and Sainsbury are names we now associate readily with public collections and museums. There are as many different kinds of collectors as there are collections - from the very rich to the only moderately rich, whether dealer-collectors, publishers, couturiers, or even a post office clerk with a passion for collecting every bit the equal of a tycoon.James Stourton guides us with great verve around the astonishing collections created in our time and explores the motivation behind them. He includes collecting dynasties such as the Rothschilds, Gettys, Thyssens, Rockefellers and Mellons, among others; and larger-than-life figures such as Peggy Guggenheim, Yves Saint Laurent, Picasso, Pierre Rosenberg, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, Charles Saatchi and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The collections themselves contain cultural treasures that have captured the imagination, from the most ancient tribal artefacts to the newest installations in today's art world. This original and far-reaching survey features many collectors who have spoken about their collections here for the first time. Magnificently illustrated throughout, with favourite images often selected by the owners themselves, this book will appeal to anyone interested in art and in the extraordinary people who collect it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49659019526417,"sku":"GOR012682452","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50056219689233,"sku":"GOR006819970","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50659283861777,"sku":"GOR008643316","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51331050242321,"sku":"CIN1857595149G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1857595149.jpg?v=1751155442"},{"product_id":"heritage-book-james-stourton-9781838933166","title":"Heritage","description":"What is heritage? When was it invented? What is its place in the world today? What is its place tomorrow?   Heritage is all around us: millions belong to its organisations, tens of thousands volunteer for it, and politicians pay lip service to it. When the Victorians began to employ the term in something approaching the modern sense, they applied it to cathedrals, castles, villages and certain landscapes. Since then a multiplicity of heritage labels have arisen, cultural and commercial, tangible and intangible – for just as every era has its notion of heritage, so does every social group, and every generation.  In Heritage, James Stourton focuses on elements of our cultural and natural environment that have been deliberately preserved: the British countryside and national parks, buildings such as Blenheim Palace and Tattershall Castle, and the works of art inside them. 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London has a wealth of truly stunning great houses, seen by many as one of the marvels of English architecture, and yet to many their histories, their interiors and their occupants remain unknown.   This book, illustrated throughout with sumptuous photography of these breathaking residences, reveals to us this secret world of riches and splendour.   From the baroque and imposing magnificence of 10 Downing Street, perhaps London's most famous address, to the extraordinary Pre-Raphaelite mosaics of Debenham House to the confident, futuristic steel and glass of the Richard Rogers House in Chelsea, this book showcases these properties and details their origin as well as the many transformations they have undergone from their construction to the present day.   There are many architectural wonders, among them Robert Adam's 20 St James’s Square and William Burges’s Tower House. Several — including Bridgewater House with its Raphaels and Titians — have held great art collections.   These are houses that hold extraordinary stories: half the Cabinet resigned after breakfast at Stratford House; and on 4 August 1914, at 9 Carlton House Terrace — then the German Embassy — young duty clerk Harold Nicholson deftly substituted one declaration of war for another.   With photography by the world-famous and multi-award winning Fritz von der Schulenburg, this title brings these houses to life in all their grandeur, and text from historian and author James Stourton delves into the many fascinating stories hidden behind the walls of these homes.  Great Houses of London opens the door to some of the greatest and grandest houses in the world to tell the stories of their owners and occupants, artists and architects, their restoration, adaptation and change.   Now available in a more compact format.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49741049135377,"sku":"NGR9780711276284","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49850247020817,"sku":"GOR013200577","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50100216987921,"sku":"GOR013073284","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53558364700945,"sku":"NIN9780711276284","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0711276285.jpg?v=1759232525"},{"product_id":"heritage-book-james-stourton-9781838933173","title":"Heritage","description":"What is heritage? When was it invented? What is its place in the world today? What is its place tomorrow?   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There are many architectural wonders, among them Robert Adam’s 20 St James’s Square and William Burges’s Tower House. Several – including Bridgewater House with its Raphaels and Titians – have held great art collections.  These are houses that hold extraordinary stories: half the Cabinet resigned after breakfast at Stratford House; and on 4 August 1914, at 9 Carlton House Terrace, then the German Embassy, young duty clerk Harold Nicholson deftly substituted one declaration of war for another.  Great Houses of London opens the door to some of the greatest and grandest houses in the world to tell the stories of their owners and occupants, artists and architects, their restoration, adaptation and change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49790073602321,"sku":"GOR006069979","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50581866807569,"sku":"GOR006018600","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52461238616337,"sku":"CIN0711233667G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53133613990161,"sku":"GOR006501061","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0711233667.jpg?v=1751393472"},{"product_id":"british-as-art-collectors-book-james-stourton-9781857597493","title":"British as Art Collectors","description":"To see the great art galleries, stately homes and museums up and down Britain today is to witness the rich story of the British as art collectors, a narrative that mirrors the history of the country. In this remarkable new book, James Stourton and Charles Sebag-Montefiore present a comprehensive survey of British art collectors down the centuries. The major collecting landmarks covered include Henry VIII, who harnessed the arts in the service of the crown, Charles I and the Whitehall Circle, the Grand Tour and the country house boom, the bonanza created by the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution, French taste, the collecting of Spanish art, the passion for Florence, the 19th-century heyday for the creation of museums, the private collectors who sparked the belated British love affair with Impressionism, the State's role in patronage and collecting after World War II, and the manner in which London has recently become a metropolis of contemporary art. Yet the authors' strengths lie not only in these grand themes, but also in their mastery of detail through the different eras. They write with equal authority about the royal patronage and collecting of the Tudor period, with which they begin, and the collectors of today. Includes over 300 illustrations, including many of the greatest works of art to have featured in British collections.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50154780688657,"sku":"GOR006180040","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53134076412177,"sku":"GOR012578973","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53262320566545,"sku":"GOR014841725","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1857597494.jpg?v=1751217903"},{"product_id":"great-houses-of-london-book-james-stourton-9780711237223","title":"Great Houses of London","description":"\"This lavishly illustrated compendium suggest that the age of elegance endures\", Mail on Sunday  The great houses of London represent one of the marvels of English architecture and yet they are almost entirely unknown. 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Clark was prescient in making this series: the upheavals of the century, the Cold War among others, convinced him of the power of barbarism and the fragility of culture. He would burnish his image with two memoirs that artfully omitted the more complicated details of his life. Now, drawing on a vast, previously unseen archive, James Stourton reveals the formidable intellect and the private man behind the figure who effortlessly dominated the art world for more than half a century: his privileged upbringing, his interest in art history beginning at Oxford, his remarkable early successes. At 27 he was keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean in Oxford and at 29, the youngest director of The National Gallery. During the war he arranged for its entire collection to be hidden in slate mines in Wales and organized packed concerts of classical music at the Gallery to keep up the spirits of Londoners during the bombing. WI helped shape his belief that art should be brought to the widest audience, a social and moral position that would inform the rest of his career. Television became a means for this message when he was appointed the first chairman of the Independent Television Authority. Stourton reveals the tortuous state of his marriage during and after the war, his wife's alcoholism, and the aspects of his own nature that he worked to keep hidden. A superb work of biography, \u003ci\u003eKenneth Clark\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelation of its remarkable subject.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50529206075665,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50529210007825,"sku":"CIN0525435352VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51543931683089,"sku":"GOR014322304","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53439646499089,"sku":"GOR011233902","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0525435352.jpg?v=1751326859"},{"product_id":"rogues-and-scholars-book-james-stourton-9781804541975","title":"Rogues and Scholars","description":"A Times Best Art Book of the Year, 2024 'A riot of a book' – Country Life's Books of the Year, 2024  The modern art market was born on a single night. 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James Stourton tells the story of the London art market from the immediate postwar period to the turn of the millennium in engaging and fast-paced style, populating his richly entertaining narrative with a glorious rogues’ gallery of clever amateurs, eccentric scholars, brilliant emigrés, cockney traders and grandees with a flair for the deal.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50857544548625,"sku":"GOR014096241","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51528509260049,"sku":"NGR9781804541975","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51528511226129,"sku":"GOR013911499","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52457472721169,"sku":"CIN1804541974VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52587995332881,"sku":"NLS9781804541975","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52929383629073,"sku":"GOR014657562","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1804541974.jpg?v=1751313141"},{"product_id":"british-embassies-book-james-stourton-9780711238602","title":"British Embassies","description":"A unique and glamorous book about British Imperial and post-Imperial architecture and a lively and evocative read for anyone interested in the international projection of British power and culture.   British Embassies have a special role in our history. They represent our country in bricks and stone and have often expressed – at least in the eyes of foreigners – our national character. Whether they are Lutyens buildings in Washington, grand palaces in Europe, beautiful old colonial buildings in Asia, or secure compounds in the Middle East, they all have stories to tell and reveal the changing face of British diplomacy.    A mixture of history, architectural description, diplomacy and anecdote, this large format picture book covers Residences and embassies in twenty-six countries to provide an authoritative text, accompanied by newly commissioned photography.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50977889091857,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50977889714449,"sku":"GOR009591740","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52697982042385,"sku":"GOR010416540","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53429190787345,"sku":"GOR012709794","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/071123860X.jpg?v=1762252566"},{"product_id":"rogues-and-scholars-book-james-stourton-9781804541982","title":"Rogues and Scholars","description":"A colourful and fast-moving account of how postwar London became the global centre of the art market  a story of Impressionist masterpieces, contemporary art, loaded buyers, dodgy dealers and huge financial transactions.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51605791539473,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51605791703313,"sku":"NGR9781804541982","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52683339137297,"sku":"NLS9781804541982","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53064846016785,"sku":"GOR014723233","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53456207675665,"sku":"GOR014929593","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1804541982.jpg?v=1754893846"},{"product_id":"rogues-and-scholars-book-james-stourton-9781639368235","title":"Rogues and Scholars","description":"\u003cb\u003eA colorful and fast-moving account of how postwar London became the global center of the art market--a story of Impressionist masterpieces, dodgy dealers, and ground-breaking financial transactions.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e On October 15, 1958, Sotheby's of Bond Street staged an \"event sale\" of seven Impressionist paintings belonging to Erwin Goldschmidt: three Manets, two Cézannes, one Van Gogh, and a Renoir. Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, and Somerset Maugham were there as celebrity guests. The seven lots went for £781,000--at the time the highest price for a single sale. The event established London as the world center of the art market and Sotheby's as an international auction house. It began a shift in power from the dealers to the auctioneers and paved the way for Impressionist paintings to dominate the market for the next forty years.\u003cbr segoe=\"\" ui=\"\" web=\"\" font-size:=\"\"\u003e \u003cbr segoe=\"\" ui=\"\" web=\"\" font-size:=\"\"\u003e Sotheby's had pulled off a massive coup by capturing the Impressionist market from Paris and New York--and now began its inexorable rise, opening offices all over the world. A huge expansion of the market followed, accompanied by rocketing prices, colorful scandals, and legal dramas. London transformed itself from a fusty place of old master painting sales to a revitalized center of contemporary art, crowned by the opening of Tate Modern in 2000. The Tate Modern successfully united new (and mostly foreign) money in London with the art world, offering its patrons a ready-made sophisticated social milieu alongside dealers in contemporary art.\u003cbr segoe=\"\" ui=\"\" web=\"\" font-size:=\"\"\u003e \u003cbr segoe=\"\" ui=\"\" web=\"\" font-size:=\"\"\u003e In a vibrant and briskly-paced style, James Stourton tells the story of the London art market from the immediate postwar period to the turn of the millennium. 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