Richard Knott – författare

During the Second World War, British artists produced over 6,000 works of war art, the result of a government scheme partly designed to prevent the artists being killed. This book tells the story of nine courageous war artists who ventured closer to the front line than any others in their profession.Edward Ardizzone, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, Anthony Gross, Thomas Hennell, Eric Ravilious, Albert Richards, Richard Seddon and John Worsley all travelled abroad into the dangers of war to chronicle events by painting them. They formed a close bond, yet two were torpedoed, two were taken prisoner and three died, two in 1945 when peacetime was at hand. Men who had previously made a comfortable living painting in studios were transformed by military uniforms and experiences that were to shape the rest of their lives, and their work significantly influenced the way in which we view war today.Portraying how war and art came together in a moving and dramatic way, and incorporating vivid examples of their paintings, this is the true story behind the war artists who fought, lived and died for their art on the front line of the Second World War.

During the 1930s, the British Intelligence agencies became increasingly concerned about Communist influence in the country. They reacted by spying on thousands of ordinary British citizens. Amongst them were many artists and writers who, in tune with the spirit of the times', had become sympathetic to left-wing causes, most notably the Spanish Civil War. Telephones were bugged, post opened, homes searched and people encouraged to report suspicious behaviour - all reminiscent of the East German Stasi.This book has been written in the light of previously secret files, now available in The National Archives, which indicate the extent of the surveillance and the consequences for those being watched. It focuses on a significant number of writers and artists who were either members of the Communist Party of Great Britain or were suspected of being fellow travellers'. They include: George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Olivia Manning, Storm Jameson, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Townsend Warner, J.B. Priestley, Doris Lessing, Julian Trevelyan, Randall Swingler, Paul Hogarth, Clive Branson and James Boswell. _The Secret War Against the Arts_ is a unique account of a dramatic period of modern history, from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, revealing how MI5 was systematic, unrelenting and uncompromising in its pursuit of artists and writers throughout the period, while failing to see the much more disturbing treachery of others - Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, for example.

“I am not pressing you to fight the weather as well as the Germans, never forget that.” So wrote Winston Churchill to Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, after the terrible events of 16 December 1943. In the murky dusk almost five hundred heavy bombers, almost entirely Lancasters, set out for Berlin from their bases in eastern England, from north Yorkshire to southern Cambridgeshire. They lifted off at around 4 pm to bomb the target four hours later and were expected to return at midnight. 328 aircrew lost their lives that night – they were the victims of the weather, not the Germans. This book relates the tragic circumstances of individual crews as they struggled to find their home bases in low cloud and fog. It also includes stories from the local people who remember hearing a low-flying aircraft and all too often the frightful explosion as it struck unexpected high ground or even trees. Some rescue attempts were successful, but for most aircrew it was death in a blazing wreck. Many of the crash sites have been explored by the author as he tried to imagine exactly how each aircraft came to grief. It contains many photos of aircraft as they were and the remaining impact areas that remain to this day.

All-India and Down Under is the dramatic story of two cricket tours undertaken in the aftermath of the Second World War. For seven years the war had put the careers of England’s cricketers on hold. Then, in 1946, England played three Tests against ‘All-India’. However, it proved to be the last such tour: by mid-1947, Indian partition had cut the country in two, a process that was violent and bloody. While the tourists were in England, struggling in a cold, wet summer, their own country was in turmoil. As that tour drew to a close in September, the MCC sent a party of war-weary cricketers to Australia to play the first Ashes series since 1938. The English were ill-prepared, some scarcely out of uniform, while others carried the physical and mental scars of the war years. For the aging captain, Walter Hammond, it would prove a tour too far. The book follows the cricketing drama of both tours amid the political uncertainty of the time, with a Labour government struggling to disentangle Britain from its Empire.