To see the great art galleries stately homes & museums up & 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 & 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 & the Whitehall Circle the Grand Tour & the country house boom the bonanza created by the Napoleonic Wars & 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 States role in patronage & collecting after World War II & 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 & collecting of the Tudor period with which they begin & the collectors of today.

Includes:: over 300 illustrations including many of the greatest works of art to have featured in British collections.

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In spite of a great passion in the game & significant involvement at amateur level British Asians are under-represented in professional football. This book asks how & why this situation has developed using extensive interviews with British Asian football players to offer an insiders assessment of the difficulties & conflicting demands faced every day. In addition the book also critically examines the work of the anti-racist football movement questioning the strategies & policies designed to eradicate racism & asking whether other approaches might be more effective or reflective of the views of the players themselves. Ideal for academics & students of the sociology of ethnicity sport youth studies or cultural studies this innovative book will also be of interest to professionals in the field of equal opportunities. ...

Every year scores of British drivers converge on Le Mans to compete in the world's most gruelling motor race; hundreds more support them in the pits & paddock & many thousands of devoted enthusiasts waving Union Jacks make their annual pilgrimage to cheer them on from the grandstands & spectator terraces. These are their stories of what many regard as the ' British race held in France'. The British At Le Mans" pays tribute not just to the people who sat behind the wheel but to all those who have shared in their successes & disappointments over the past 85 years. In this wide-ranging book the author takes the reader behind the scenes to reveal the stories behind the stories many of them as fascinating as the main ones played out on the track." ...

Great Britains role in shaping the history of the automobile cannot be overestimated. The British motor industry has been responsible for many of the worlds landmark car designs & its famous names
- including Jaguar Bentley AC Rolls-Royce Aston Martin MG & Lotus
- are inextricably linked with some of the most recognized & coveted models ever made. Now reissued in hardback format this beautifully presented book gathers together more than 50 of the most significant & seductive British cars designed between 1907 & the present day from the Roll-Royce Silver Ghost to the Jaguar XK180. With an introduction describing the often tortuous story of British motoring & its great marques a succinct description of each cars history design & performance & unparalleled images by one of the worlds foremost car photographers this book is an authoritative tribute to the nation that launched the sports car.

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From Futurism & Modernism to Art Deco & Surrealism aviation was from its earliest days inextricably linked with revolutionary new ways of seeing the world. Focusing on the golden age of British civil aviation British Aviation Posters shows how art & design were applied with great creativity & style to develop & promote aviation in the UK & beyond. The story begins with the air shows & exhibitions of the early pioneers through the start of regular passenger flights in the 1920s & the creation of Imperial Airways as the UK national carrier in 1924. By the 1930s passenger routes across the world were being developed & promoted with increasingly sophisticated visual publicity to persuade the British public to be more air minded in a turbulent period of political & social upheaval. The New Elizabethan Age took UK aviation in new directions in the 1950s with BOAC & BEA ushering in the development of jet airliners & a growing consumer market that needed to be serviced by new forms of marketing & promotion. Drawing on British Airways premier poster collection & featuring the work of such distinguished designers as Theyre Lee-Elliott Ben Nicholson Edward Mc Knight Kauffer F.H.K. Henrion Gabby Schreiber Robin Day Abram Games Hugh Casson & Frank Wootton British Aviation Posters offers a definitive account of this seminal period in modern UK design history as Oliver Green & Scott Anthony show how posters publicity & graphic design were used to express the speed progress & sheer excitement of flight. ...

This superb reference book achieved the status of classic soon after its first publication in 1993; it was soon out of print ...

With the outbreak of World War II Britains Royal Navy & her fleet of battleships would be at the forefront of her defence. Yet ten of the 12 battleships were already over 20 years old having served in World War I & required extensive modifications to allow them to perform a vital service throughout the six long years of conflict. This title offers a comprehensive review of the development of these British battleships from their initial commissioning to their peacetime modifications & wartime service with detailed descriptions of the effectiveness of the main armament of individual ships. With specially commissioned artwork & a dramatic re-telling of key battleship conflicts this book will highlight what it was like on board for the sailors who risked their lives on the high seas. ...

With the outbreak of World War II Britains Royal Navy & her fleet of battleships would be at the forefront of her defence. Yet ten of the twelve battleships were already over twenty years old having served in World War I & required extensive modifications to allow them to perform a vital service throughout the six long years of conflict. This title offers a comprehensive review of the seven battleships of the Nelson & King George V classes from their initial commissioning to their peacetime modifications & wartime service. Moreover with specially commissioned artwork & a dramatic re-telling of key battles such as the duel between the Bismark & HMS Rodney this book will highlight what it was like on board for the sailors who risked their lives on the high seas. ...

This superb reference book achieved the status of 'classic' soon after its first publication in 1986; it was soon out of print ...

At the end of World War II Britain was desperate for new buses & coaches. The manufacturers who had built them is the 1930s hade been diverted to war production & only a tiny number of buses were built during the war. So many companies new to making buses came into the business after the war so that the late 1940s & the 1950s saw a fascinating variety of different types reaching the market. In this book the twenty-seven bus manufacturers of the period
- large & small
- are dealt with in A-Z order from AEC to Vulcan. The author gives a brief history of each & then provides individual coverage of the models produced using material from brochures & advertisements for the illustrations to give the flavour of the period.

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