Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gaugin by Sue Prideaux
Reviewed by Harriet Before I started this very interesting and comprehensive book, I probably knew as much about Gauguin as most people. I’d seen countless reproductions of his powerful, imaginative…
Material: The Art of Handcrafting Beautiful Objects in a Digital Age by Nick Kary
Review by Frances Spurrier Kary starts his book by saying that he wants to help understand the relationship we all have fashioning our lives within the material structure of the…
Portrait of the Art Dealer as a Young Man: New York in the Sixties, by Michael Findlay
Review by Annabel My fascination with the 1960s (the decade in which I was a child), will never die. Add in the world of art and a New York setting…
All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield
Reviewed by Harriet This is the second book about fraud I’ve reviewed this year, the first being Joseph Hone’s impressive The Book Forger. Obviously, as you can tell from the…
Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death, by Laura Cumming
I am a very critical reader; there are not many books that I unreservedly admire. So it is notable that when I finished reading Thunderclap, I closed the covers, turned…
Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World by Katie Treggiden
Review by Liz Dexter These are all menders and remakers working in collaboration with nature. They understand that as humans we are part of the natural world and that we…
Architecture, Homes & Gardens
Art & Design, Craft & Photography
History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology
Non Fiction
Lifestyle Revolution: How taste changed class in late 20th-century Britain by Ben Highmore
Review by Annabel Some years ago, our Shiny editor-at-large, Simon, reviewed a book by Ben Highmore called The Great Indoors. That book explored typical homes over the last century or so…
Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul
Reviewed by Karen Langley In recent years, artist Gwen John’s star has risen, with her work nowadays receiving much more acclaim than that of her brother Augustus. However, this was…
Circles and Squares: The Lives and Loves of the Hampstead Modernists by Caroline Maclean
Review by Karen Langley The early part of the 20th century was a period when modern art was flourishing. New ways of living were being explored, abstract art forms were…
Grayson’s Art Club: The Exhibition (Manchester Art Gallery, 2020)
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Back at the beginning of the first lockdown, Grayson Perry, potter and tapestry maker extraordinaire and no stranger to intimate and challenging TV shows, ran an…
Knitting From Fair Isle by Mati Ventrillon
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton There are a few new knitting books, annuals, or journals in the offing that deal with Fair Isle or Shetland lace, but this is the first…
Cover by Peter Mendelsund
Reviewed by Harriet Ed’s Note: Six years after its publication in hardback, Mendelsund’s Cover gets a paperback release, so we are reposting Harriet’s original review. Every choice of color, every…
Grayson Perry by Jacky Klein & Grayson Perry
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This sumptuous book, that has a lot of content, in terms of both text and image, is a real treat – the only book so far…
Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years, ed. Catrin Jones and Chris Stephens
Review by Liz Dexter Grayson Perry has achieved the status of National Treasure in the hearts and minds of a large proportion of the British public, writing and broadcasting on…
Art & Design, Craft & Photography
Ecology & Environment, Natural World
Non Fiction
Travel & the World
Tracks: Walking the Ancient Landscapes of Britain by Philip Hughes
Softback review by Liz Dexter This quietly stunning book will appeal to anyone interested in art, landscape, walking, geology, geography, maps and ancient monuments. Deceptively simple paintings reveal both the…
A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen by Martin Gayford and David Hockney
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This is a new ‘compact’ edition of this book, with a revised final chapter bringing it all up to date, and reproductions of three new David…
Art Essentials: Impressionism by Ralph Skea
Review by Liz Dexter Another volume in the excellently done Art Essentials series, this volume on Impressionism is written by Ralph Skea, an artist and academic who has published several…
How to Read a Photograph: Understanding, Interpreting and Enjoying the Great Photographers by Ian Jeffrey
Review by Liz Dexter Of course, reading a photograph is subjective – there are not really any rules for what makes a photograph great or why a particular person will…
Art Essentials: Street Art by Simon Armstrong
Review by Liz Dexter The Art Essentials series aims to be engaging, accessible, authoritative, richly illustrated and expertly written and conceived, and with a bookseller and book collector who has…
The Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations by Martin Gayford
Review by Liz Dexter “The pursuit of art is a journey that never stops: the more you see, the more you want to see.” First of all much kudos to…
Futurekind: Design by and for the People by Robert Phillips
Review by Liz Dexter Robert Phillips is a senior tutor on the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, as well as being an award-winning product designer in…
Chromatopia: An Illustrated History of Colour by David Coles
Review by Liz Dexter This truly spectacular book would grace any coffee table with ease, but it’s more than just a pretty face, with fascinating facts in abundance and offers…
So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Translated by Ingvild Burkey Reviewed by Jean Morris This is a book for fans of Karl Ove Knausgaard who also love the work of his native Norway’s greatest painter, Edvard…
Architecture, Homes & Gardens
Art & Design, Craft & Photography
Biography & Memoir, Diaries
Non Fiction
Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy
Review by Rob Spence It probably doesn’t occur to many people as they struggle to fix bolt B to batten F of the Ikea flatpack wardrobe that the exercise in…
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