Alexandra Harris – författare

Writers and artists across the centuries, from Chaucer to Ian McEwan, and from the creator of the Luttrell Psalter in the 14th century to John Piper in the 20th, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things and woven them into their novels, poems and paintings. Alexandra Harris’s subject is not the weather itself, but the weather as it is daily recreated in the human imagination. She builds her remarkable story from small evocative details and catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals: ‘Bloody cold’, says Jonathan Swift in the ‘slobbery’ January of 1713; Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud and John Ruskin wants to bottle one… Weatherland is both a sweeping panorama of cultural climates on the move and a richly illustrated, intimate account – for although weather is vast, it is experienced physically, emotionally and spiritually; as Harris cleverly reveals, it is at the very heart of English life and culture.

An award-winning study of England’s unique and peculiarly insular variant of modernism. While the battles for modern art and society were being fought in France and Spain, it has seemed a betrayal that John Betjeman and John Piper were in love with a provincial world of old churches and tea-shops. In this multi-award-winning book, Alexandra Harris tells a different story. In the 1930s and 1940s, artists and writers explored what it meant to be alive in England. Eclectically, passionately, wittily, they showed that ‘the modern’ need not be at war with the past. Constructivists and conservatives could work together, and even the Bauhaus émigré, László Moholy-Nagy, was beguiled into taking photographs for Betjeman’s nostalgic Oxford University Chest. This modern English renaissance was shared by writers, painters, gardeners, architects, critics, tourists and composers. John Piper, Virginia Woolf, Florence White, Christopher Tunnard, Evelyn Waugh, E. M. Forster and the Sitwells are part of the story, along with Bill Brandt, Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious and Cecil Beaton.

An accessible introduction to a writer whose work is of timeless significance and whose unconventional life is a continuous source of fascination. In 1907, when she was twenty-five and not yet a published novelist, Virginia Stephen had everything still to prove. She felt herself to be at a crossroads: ‘I shall be miserable, or happy; a wordy sentimental creature, or a writer of such English as shall one day burn the pages.’ Today her prose is still blazing; perhaps it burns brighter than ever. This is the story of how a determined young woman with a notebook became one of the greatest writers of all time. It is a story that sparkles with wit and friendship, language and love, wicked jokes and passionate appreciation of ordinary things. Hers was a life lived with intensity from moment to moment, courageous and defiant of convention, and shaped into the lasting patterns of art. Considering each of Woolf’s novels in context, this gripping account shows why, eighty years after her death, Virginia Woolf continues to haunt and inspire us.

A SPECTATOR AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR'Remarkable.' THE TIMES'Wonderful.' GUARDIAN'Fascinating.' DAILY TELEGRAPH'As a portrait of a place, it's hard to better.' COUNTRY LIFE'A thrill akin to discovering buried treasure.' RICHARD MABEY'Humane, humorous and joyful.' RUTH SCURRWhen the celebrated critic and cultural historian Alexandra Harris returned to her childhood home of West Sussex, she realised that she barely knew the place at all. As she probed beneath the surface, excavating layers of archival records and everyday objects - bringing a lifetime's reading to bear on the place where she started - hundreds of unexpected stories and hypnotic voices emerged from the area's past. Who has stood here, she asks; what did they see? From the painter John Constable and the modernist writer Ford Madox Ford to the lost local women who left little trace, these electrifying encounters - spanning the Downs, Poland, Australia, Canada - inspired her to imagine lives that seemed distant, yet were deeply connected through their shared landscape.By focusing on one small patch of England, Harris finds 'a World in a Grain of Sand' and opens vast new horizons.

'Remarkable.' THE TIMES'Wonderful.' GUARDIAN'Fascinating.' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A landscape-keyhole onto the whole world . . . Glorious.' Robert Macfarlane'A thrill akin to discovering buried treasure.' RICHARD MABEYWhen Alexandra Harris returned to her childhood home of West Sussex, she realised that she barely knew the place at all. As she probed beneath the surface, excavating layers of archival records and everyday objects, hundreds of unexpected stories and hypnotic voices emerged from the area's past. These electrifying encounters - ranging from those with the painter John Constable and the modernist writer Ford Madox Ford to the lost local women who left little trace - inspired her to imagine lives that, though seemingly distant, are deeply connected through this shared landscape. By focusing on one small patch of England, Harris opens vast new horizons.

Archipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the lasttwenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by Andrew McNeillie, with theassistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine therelationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought togetherestablished and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the studyof islands, coasts and waterways. It journeys from the Shetlands to Cornwall, from theAran Islands to the coast of Yorkshire, tracing the cultures of diverse zones through someof the best in contemporary writing about place and people.This collection gathers poetry, prose and visual art in clusters grouped around the Irishand British archipelago, with contributions from an array of significant artists. It includesnewly commissioned work as well as an interview between Andrew McNeillie andRobert Macfarlane on the development of Archipelago across the years.

As the twenty-first century unfolds, notions of our cultural past and how our history has influenced our present shift almost daily. Within this, accepted artistic trajectories are being questioned and new connections made. In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking publication, experts in their field address specific aspects of British art of the twentieth century. Presenting new perspectives on established narratives, subjects range from British Surrealism and the rise of corporate and private patronage, to nationality and British identity. Complemented by a range of striking images, this publication succeeds in showing the strength of the British artistic tradition while also encouraging the reader to rethink and explore the existing narrative.

This publication offers a rich and expansive visual record of Julie Brook’s artistic practice, and proposes a unique collaboration between Brook and distinct voices from the nature writing and craftsmanship traditions. Situating Brook’s practice in the context of critical reflections by Robert Macfarlane, Alexandra Harris and Raku Jikinyū, the publication presents a striking visual narrative of Brook's landscape and tidal sculptural work, and a sense of its timeless yet contemporary resonance. Documenting in depth a number of recent works made in the Hebrides, Japan and Namibia, their shared attention to the elements and their key pre-occupations of the fleeting, mobile forces of light, time, and gravity demonstrate Brook’s coherent vision within vastly contrasting environments. Throughout her oeuvre, the balance between what Brook makes in relation to the environment and materials themselves is paramount. Including film stills, photography and drawing, which are all integral languages for conceptualising and communicating the work, plus insightful extracts from Brook’s notebooks, this beautiful publication succeeds in providing the reader with a unique understanding of the artist’s ‘monuments to the moment’.

Modernism on Sea brings together writing by some of today's most exciting seaside critics, curators, filmmakers and scholars, and takes the reader on a journey around the coast of Britain to explore the rich artistic and cultural heritage that can be found there, from St Ives to Scarborough. The authors consider avant-garde art, architecture, film, literature and music, from the early twentieth century to the present, setting the arrival of modernism against the background of seaside tradition. From the cheeky postcards marvelled at by George Orwell to austere modernist buildings such as the De La Warr Pavilion; from the Camden Town Group's sojourn in Brighton to John Piper's 'Nautical Style'; from Paul Nash's surrealist benches on the promenade in Swanage to the influence of bunting and deckchairs on the Festival of Britain - Modernism on Sea is a sweeping tour de force which pays tribute to the role of the seaside in shaping British modernism. The essays in this book were inspired by the 'Modernism on Sea' conference that was held at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea in July 2007.

Modernism on Sea brings together writing by some of today’s most exciting seaside critics, curators, filmmakers and scholars, and takes the reader on a journey around the coast of Britain to explore the rich artistic and cultural heritage that can be found there, from St Ives to Scarborough. The authors consider avant-garde art, architecture, film, literature and music, from the early twentieth century to the present, setting the arrival of modernism against the background of seaside tradition. From the cheeky postcards marvelled at by George Orwell to austere modernist buildings such as the De La Warr Pavilion; from the Camden Town Group’s sojourn in Brighton to John Piper’s ‘Nautical Style’; from Paul Nash’s surrealist benches on the promenade in Swanage to the influence of bunting and deckchairs on the Festival of Britain – Modernism on Sea is a sweeping tour de force which pays tribute to the role of the seaside in shaping British modernism.