Guy Mankowski – författare

Albion's Secret History compiles snapshots of English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from Evelyn Waugh to PJ Harvey via The Long Blondes and The Libertines. By focusing on cultural figures who served to define England, Guy Mankowski looks at those who have really shaped Albion’s secret history, not just its oft-quoted official cultural history. He departs from the narrative that dutifully follows the Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Oasis, and, by instead penetrating the surface of England’s pop history (including the venues it was shaped in), throws new light on ideas of Englishness. As well as music, Mankowski draws from art, film, architecture and politics, showing the moments at which artists like Tricky and Goldfrapp altered our sense of a sometimes green but sometimes unpleasant land. 'The most illuminating odyssey through lost, hidden or forgotten English pop culture since Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine.' Rhian E. Jones, author of Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender

Millennial author Jude is lost in obscurity until he's saved by an award bequeathed by Alberto Valdez, the highly controversial surrealist Spanish author who first inspired him to write. But given Valdez�s unsolved disappearance, the motives behind his giving Jude the award are a mystery. Jude soon learns that there is more to the award than he'd first realised, and it requires him to complete Valdez�s final masterpiece. But why was he chosen? And can one person ever really know another -�let alone complete their work? You Complete the Masterpiece�is part jet-setting thriller, part literary puzzle, and part indictment of corruption in the #MeToo era.