“I had access to what felt like a secret world. It was a subject that had been written about and dramatised but I don’t think any photographers had ever tackled before. There was a change going on. Someone described it as a ‘last hurrah’ of the upper classes.” – Dafydd Jones

Oxford University at the start of the eighties, rife with black ties and ballgowns. A change was on its way – best described by a newspaper as ‘the Return of the Bright Young Things’.

At this time, Oxford University was synonymous with the wealthy, the powerful and the privileged. Many of the young people in these pictures moved on to have careers in the establishment including Boris Johnson and David Cameron. In these photographs, however, their youth is undeniable: teenagers in full suits celebrate the rise of Thatcher in England and Reagan in America, in between punting on the river, chasing romance and partying through the night.

“It was Thatcher’s Britain, a period of celebration for those that had money” – Dafydd Jones

Oxford: The Last Hurrah shows a world that has been written about and dramatised, yet never photographed. Affectionate and critical, it pokes affectionate fun at its subjects while celebrating English eccentricity. From the architectural marvels of the colleges to misty mornings along the river at dawn, this is Oxford at its most beautiful – and the students of the 1980s at their most raw and honest.

Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop: Bioclimatic Ceramic Assemblies IV presents terra cotta design research, conducted under the auspices of the annual Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop (ACAW), between architectural firms and terra cotta manufacturer Boston Valley Terra Cotta. It chronicles the work of architectural firms Kieran Timberlake, Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF), HKS, Payette, Pelli Clarke Pelli, SHoP Architects, Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM), Studios Architecture and two academic teams from Alfred University and the University at Buffalo. The book presents a unique model for exploring the state of the art in terra cotta design through the production of experimental prototypes. These include rain screen facade systems, urban sound devices, structures, massive wall systems and furniture. Now in its fifth year, this invitation-only workshop has teams collaborate with the manufacturer to develop a design that engages bioclimatic concerns and pushes material and manufacturing possibilities.

Richard Manion Architecture creates distinctive residences and estates with a respect for traditional forms and historic imagery adapted to modern living. The curated selection of rarely published projects in this second volume of RMA’s work, Streamlined, demonstrates the firm’s signature classicist style, which draws upon traditional and streamlined classical, regional, and contemporary influences to reflect authentic details, proportions, and a sophisticated sense of place for the 21st century.

In this book, the firm’s focus is on the integration of modernism within an overall framework of simplicity and restraint, discretion and harmony. Academic studies of European modernism, with its visionary approach and embodiment of the machine age, have come back to inspire, but with the understanding that many of its roots can be traced back to the heritage of classical design principles. This exquisite, fully illustrated volume showcases RMA’s goal to unite ideas about tradition, history, and modernity in a synergy and explores the meaning of shared architectural imagery and heritage for our time.

Nantucket: Classic American style 30 miles out to sea explores how the island’s classic New England nautical style is shaped by its rugged landscape, as well as the sport, art, and its inhabitants. The island’s tight-knit community of achievers and dreamers has created an enviable aesthetic that’s affected in equal measure by the people, its historic grey-shingle homes and the 14-mile-long island itself, its wind, sea, and wild landscape. This stunningly photographed book features portraits and environmental shots of summer residents and islanders in their homes and leisure pursuits across the island, and elements that shape their Nantucket style.

Whilst many books have been published about war, the role of the prisoner of war has been largely ignored or paid scant attention. This book, along with the author’s other title – The Arts and Crafts of Napoleonic and American Prisoners of War 1756-1816 – aims to correct this imbalance, and is the result of the author’s quest over thirty years into this almost-forgotten field of history. Part One tells of the various wars that saw the men, from many different countries, become prisoners. Tales of individuals and their voyages, mutinies, fortunes and failures also feature, adding more personal touches to the history and, as with the author’s other title, all the accounts are written in a highly evocative style. Part Two is largely devoted to the prison hulks, describing the vessels and the conditions on board that the prisoners would have had to endure. Many of these hulks were former warships. Now stripped of all their equipment, and with their masts, sails and rigging removed, they sat disabled offshore, filled with their human cargo. Part Three concerns itself primarily with the depots and prisons on land, beginning with a general overview, and going on to explore in greater detail individual establishments and the conditions within. The final three chapters in this section deal with the terms and conditions of various types of parole – many officers granted parole were able to live almost as free men, as long as they did not take up arms against their captors – as well as the punishments to be expected should parole be broken. Written with numerous personal accounts, and drawing upon many years of painstaking and dedicated research, this important book fills a significant gap in the literature of military history.

This wide-ranging study is the outcome of the author’s thirty-year quest to collect information about a neglected and almost forgotten field of history – the prisoner of war, the conditions under which he was held and how he employed his time during long years of captivity. In this instance, the whole is set against an historical background dating from the Seven Years War (1756-63) to Napoleon’s downfall in 1816. Information has been painstakingly acquired by detailed searches through the Public Records Offices of England, Scotland and Wales and the archives of numerous county towns. The author has also studied more than one hundred towns and villages, where paroled captured officers were detained, and visited the sites of prison depots – great and small – and ports and rivers where the dreaded prison hulks had once been moored. The gathering and examination of artefacts, relics and other relevant material was a further important aspect of this extensive study. During the course of his lengthy researches, the author assembled what may well be one of the largest private collections of prisoner of war artefacts in existence. Although thousands of items of prisoners’ work have survived to the present day, most have disappeared into private collections and museums, at home or abroad. A representative selection of items from the author’s own extensive collection is featured in the second part of this book and will show the extraordinary high standard of workmanship achieved by many of the prisoners of war.

Tadema Gallery was founded in 1978 by Sonya and David Newell-Smith in London’s famed Camden Passage in Islington. They were successful photo-journalists who ventured into the field of 20th century abstract art and the decorative arts of the 19th and 20th centuries. By 1982 they had discovered a passion for artist-designed jewellery and showed in the gallery an eclectic choice of jewels from significant designers of the Revivalist, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, Jugendstil, Art Deco, and Modernist movements. With over 500 unique jewellery pieces from the 1860s to 1960s, the book reflects the 40-year history of the gallery and the superb eye of its inspirational founders.

Our contemporary condition, governed by the abstract apparatus of the capitalist market, demands a critical reading of the distribution, ownership, and use of common resources such as land. This is especially true in Britain with its long history of privatisation stemming from land enclosure. The latest research campaign of Laboratory Basel (laba), a satellite studio of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, investigated the English manor house and how it can serve as a testing ground to reassess Britain’s complex and ongoing relationship with the countryside.

The south-west of England, the most rural region of one of the more densely populated countries in Europe, reflects all the absurdities of a globalised country under pressure to develop economically, physically and environmentally. Highly protected landscapes, both natural and composed, form the backdrop to historic seats of political power and wealth, whilst sites of intense modern productivity are neatly concealed behind natural veils.

Manor Lessons: Commons Revisited, the concluding volume of laba’s Teaching and Research in Architecture series, explores the lessons that can be learned from the compound history of the Manorial System, whose forgotten feudalistic origins were once rooted in the idea of the land, not as private property but as common ground.

Newcastle is England’s most northerly city and shares a long history with Gateshead, its neighbour on the south side of the River Tyne. The two, city and town respectively, are a heady mix of the old and new; both were industrial powerhouses during the 19th Century that have successfully embraced recent change, reinventing themselves as vibrant places of entertainment and culture. With this book in hand, journey over and under the Tyne to discover treasures such as the steam turbine ship Turbinia, a sleekly streamlined example of north-eastern mechanical know-how; wander across the wide-open space of the Town Moor, where President Jimmy Carter has the right to graze cattle; take in Saltwell Towers, an eccentric castle in the leafy surroundings of Saltwell Park; then top it all off with a pint in a pub where the ghost of Charles I may well make an appearance. Written by a Geordie, this book will help you explore the quirkier side of both Newcastle and Gateshead, and discover their hidden gems.

Whistler is so much more than one of the best places on Earth to ski. Tucked in the southwestern corner of British Columbia, less than two hours from Vancouver, the resort municipality is really as much a state of mind as a destination. Its modern culture, firmly rooted in the great outdoors, offers a unique healthy and active lifestyle that people around the world can only dream about. Yet many of the over two-million people that visit Whistler annually from every corner of the world are in such a hurry to get up into the mountains they miss so many of the secret sites, hidden gems and offbeat attractions scattered throughout the Sea to Sky corridor – home of Canada’s most scenic road. When you know where to look, you’ll be amazed by Whistler’s rich diversity and quirky surprises, from the funky dives where local “Liftees” dine, to high-end, glamorous shops in the village, aboriginal landmarks, ghost towns, and left-over traces of the Winter Olympics. And although mining and logging have been replaced by tourism, vestiges of the early pioneer days still pop up in the most unusual places.

Robin Grierson’s photography book, Steam Rally is published by Lost Press and has an introduction by the esteemed journalist and author, Ian Jack. It consists of 72 high quality colour photographs that explore steam rallies in England over the past 30 years. The images record the engine men, their restored traction engines, and the lively steam heritage scene, which draws thousands to its events around the country every summer.

Having grown up around his father’s bus garage in County Durham and spent much of his formative years tinkering with engines, Grierson found himself instinctively drawn to the steam people and their beloved vintage machines. This collection of thoughtfully composed images, include respectful portraits, close up details of people and their machines, and wider views of the steam rally within the rural landscape. Grierson pays particular attention to the work-worn textures, stained surfaces, and subtle colours of the working steam environment.
“The genuine tone of this work derives undoubtedly from the photographer’s long acquaintance with tough working men and the tools and sounds of busy engineering yard’s” – Ag magazine  

Neither derivatives of Western cities nor isolated from them, Chinese cities in the past four decades are perhaps best captured in their characteristic complexity through a concept in biological evolution: drift. Unlike mutation, adaptation, and migration, drift of phenotypes takes place when chance events terminate some features and allow other features to flourish. The Chinese culture, structurally divergent from the common Indo-European civilizational roots of Western cultures, can be seen to function as a set of “chance events” in the normative processes of urban change. The consequences of these “bottlenecks” of urban evolution are both fascinating and instructive: Chinese cities, when studied with this framework, begin to acquire an entirely different order of significance, injecting urban theory and practice with fresh vigor and insights. Through 13 case studies, more than 60 original maps and drawings, and extensive photographic documentation, the book reveals how three “drift triggers” – ten thousand things, figuration, and group action – have altered typological development in Chinese cities in recent decades.

Over the past decade, Frank Bowling has enjoyed belated attention and celebration, including a major Tate Britain retrospective in 2019. This comprehensive monograph, published in 2011, is now available in an updated and expanded edition.

Born in British Guiana in 1934, Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he was recognised as an original force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements.

Dividing his time between New York and London since the late 1960s, he has developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style that combines aspects of American painterly abstraction with a treatment of light and space that consciously recollects the great English landscape painters Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a compelling text the art writer, critic and curator Mel Gooding hails Bowling as one of the finest British artists of his generation.

Architecture as Art: The Work of Stephen M. Sullivan illustrates the author’s residential architectural practice based in the Pacific Northwest. It also describes his personal design philosophy founded both in the classics of western architecture and in his experience and appreciation of the architecture and craft traditions of Japan.

The book tells the story of Sullivan’s development as an artist using architecture as his medium. It includes essays on his views of architectural design, which have been shaped by his personal history in the landscapes and the architecture of New England and Japan. Sullivan’s training as a potter informs his architecture in its interpretation of houses as “vessels of experience” and in his work’s focus on materiality and the craft of construction.

Thematic essays address topics such as the importance of intuition in the design process and the interplay of analysis with nonrational ways of thinking. The influence of the site and its natural energies, the role of ordering principles, and the narrative capacity of architectural design influence Sullivan’s process of integration, forming unique design responses to diverse clients and settings. These themes address specific facets of his design method and introduce a selection of projects, which are illustrated with photographs and drawings. The projects display the author’s belief in generating an architectural language unique to a design’s client and its context, creating an architecture specifically tuned to its circumstances in time and place.      

Following a selection of primary projects, a section on small houses, and a section on historic projects, a catalogue of Sullivan’s selected projects executed between 1985 and 2020 is included.   

The moment he was handed a glass of Cockburn 1908 vintage port by his grandfather at 13 years old, Steven Spurrier knew he would make wine his career. He travelled Europe in his red sports car (fitted with a compact wine fridge in the boot), working the vintage in Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne, before his first extraordinary move was to set up shop and sell wine to the French. As an Englishman in the heart of Paris, this seemed a remarkably bold (if not foolish) project, but the plan worked.

Steven’s adventures in wine did not stop there. In 1976, he went on to mastermind the ‘Judgement of Paris’, the France v California blind tasting that changed the wine world forever.

This memoir looks back on Steven’s life charting the incidents, adventures, ideas and discoveries that formed his wine journey. With tributes from Hugh Johnson, Miguel Torres, Oz Clarke, Jancis Robinson MW, Warren Winiarski and many more…

Peter Vinding-Diers is a Danish aristocrat turned roving winemaker who, on escaping his studies at the Sorbonne one summer found himself on Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune, suddenly besotted. Peter’s first foray into wine took him to the Cape (via a quick turn parachuting into the war-zone in Vietnam), where he learned vineyard ways and wine science. Next came a dazzling decade in Bordeaux, where his pioneering exploits began to catch the world’s attention. He then ventured to Bulgaria, Brazil, Spain, Chile and Hungary earning himself the title ‘Flying Winemaker’ (he was one of the first!). Along his wine journey, Peter has frequently had to call on his Viking ancestors for help – not least in taming his ‘Montecarrubo’ vineyards on the wilder side of Sicily – but whether by accident or by design (mostly the latter), he has always found himself at the forefront of vinous discovery…

111 Places in County Durham You Shouldn’t Miss will unveil Durham’s secret depths and lesser-known delights, allowing it to step out from the shadow of its spectacular, UNESCO-listed cathedral and its highly-ranked university. 

This small, hilly city has its gems, but the county’s historic towns (Bishop Auckland, Barnard Castle, Newton Aycliffe), by the water (Hartlepool, Seaham) and nestled away in its tiniest villages (Kelloe, Tow Law) are home to Durham’s true hidden wonders. 

Discover the mysterious sea caves at Blackhall Rocks, or wander up Nose’s Point to Blast Beach. Traverse Durham city’s wonkiest staircase, or make your own mind up about the county’s most controversially-designed estate. 

Marvel at Killhope’s working Waterwheel, and uncover the county’s famous coal mining past. Unearth disused collieries and quarries reclaimed by the overgrowth surrounding them.  

Spot what’s left of a stone boar at Barnard Castle. Hear the real story behind Hartlepool’s most baffling local legend, and try to stand atop a haunted copse… if you dare.

“From a lighthouse keeper in Norway to a reindeer herder in Mongolia, the resulting series offers a captivating portrait of 10 extraordinary individuals living off the grid.” — Financial Times

“His book takes you on a journey of discovery.” — Home & Interiors Scotland
Between 2015 and 2020, photographer Brice Portolano travelled from the islands of Alaska to the Patagonian steppe and from the forests of Lapland to the highlands of Iran to capture the daily lives of 10 extraordinary people who made profound changes in their lives in order to live closer to nature. They consciously built a life away from the hustle and bustle of the city, usually without a phone signal or internet access. Their lives are arduous, but also full of a sense of personal freedom, self-determination, and fulfilment. These photographs present an inspiring vision of the joys of finding one’s place in the world and the challenges of living off the grid.

In these 10 vivid portraits of alternative lifestyles, we meet: Tinja, the dog sled driver in Lapland; Ali, the Persian horseman; Barny, the self-supporter in a circus wagon in Cumbria, England; Zaya, the reindeer herder in the Mongolian taiga; George, the hostel father in Tuscany; Sylwia, the artist on the Greek island of Lefkada; Sky, the Argentinean goucha; Ben, the hunter in Utah, USA; Jerry, the oyster farmer in Alaska; Elena, the lighthouse keeper in Norway.

Text in English and German.

Lumen, a survey of the four-decade career of British-Indian artist Sutapa Biswas, accompanies two solo exhibitions of the artist’s work held in 2021–22. Biswas emigrated from India to the UK with her family in the 1960s. Taking the long histories of colonialism together with personal memories, Biswas’s art meditates on questions of migration, identity and belonging. Her practice has consistently interrogated Western tradition and discourse, pushing past absences, exclusions and limited representations to make evident the entwined histories of culture and politics.

This publication details Biswas’s career from its origins in the Black Arts Movement in the 1980s to her important photographic installations of the 1990s and her subsequent major moving-image works, including her newly commissioned film Lumen. The first substantial publication on the artist in over 17 years, it features two new conversations with the artist and two commissioned essays. It also includes a republication of Griselda Pollock’s important text on Biswas’s work, along with a postface reflecting on their relationship in the decades since the essay’s original publication.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition: Sutapa Biswas: Lumen BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (26 June 2021–22 March 2022) and Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge (16 October 2021–30 January 2022).

“Good evening. I’m from Essex, in case you couldn’t tell.” Thus spoke the inimitable punk poet of the flat lands, Ian Dury, in 1977. Few other parts of England have so distinctive an identity, sent up by a hundred comedians since the 1990 birth of Essex Man, epitomised by the rise of the ‘Mockney’ radio celeb, and incarcerated through their hideous offspring in TV’s The Only Way is Essex. It’s not just an accent, it’s a way of life, a culture shaped by the Diaspora from London generation after generation, the lure of the sea and powerful Thames estuary, the encroaching of the waters from innumerable creeks and inlets, the dream seaside resort of Southend, the longing for the most succulent of seafood indulgences, the delicious countryside of copses and boughs painted by Constable, but also the threat of invasion by hostile forces repelled by Britain’s most formidable forts. It’s Essex. You can tell.