The Face of Britain by Simon Schama
Author of a number of celebrated works, including the bestselling The Story of the Jews and Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama's latest book fuses history and art to create a tour de force of narrative sweep and illuminating insight. Using images from works-paintings, photographs, lithographs, etchings, sketches-found in London's National Portrait Gallery, The Face of Britain weaves together an account of their composition, framed by their particular moment of creation, and in the process unveils a collective portrait of nation and its history."Portraits," Schama writes, "have always been made with an eye to posterity." Commissioned to paint Winston Churchill in 1954, Graham Sutherland struggled with how to capture the "savior" of Great Britain honestly and humanely. Schama calls the portrait, initially damned, the "most powerful image of a Great Briton ever executed." Annie Leibovitz's photograph of a nude John Lennon kissing Yoko Ono, taken five hours before his murder, bears "a weight of poignancy she could not possibly have anticipated." Hans Holbein's preparatory sketch for a portrait of Henry VIII depicts "an unstoppable engine of dynastic generation." Here are expressions from across the centuries of normalcy and heroism, beauty and disfigurement, aristocracy and deprivation, the familiar and the obscure-the faces of courtesans, warriors, workers, activists, playwrights, the high and mighty as well as pub-crawlers. Linking them is Schama's vibrant exploration of how their connective power emerges from the dynamic between subject and artist, work and viewer, time and place.
Schama's compelling analysis and impassioned evocation of these works create an unforgettable verbal mosaic that at once reveals and transforms the images he places before us. Lavishly illustrated and written with the storytelling brio that is Schama's trademark, The Face of Britain invites us to look at a nation's visual legacies and find its reflection.
Simon Schama is a Columbia University professor of history and art history and the author of numerous works, including Rough Crossings, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, and The Embarrassment of Wealth. He writes on politics and culture for the Financial Times and has written and presented over fifty documentaries for the BBC, PBS, and the History Channel, including The Power of Art, which won the 2007 International Emmy for Outstanding Arts Programming.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780190621872 |
| ISBN 10 | 0190621877 |
| Title | The Face of Britain |
| Author | Simon Schama |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | OUP India |
| Year published | 2016-09-16 |
| Number of pages | 632 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |