Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire, June 25-Oct. 2, 2011.

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) explored fundamental issues of life with an urgency and persistence unique among British artists of his generation. His art comments on religion, love, sexuality, fraternity and community. Covering all aspects of Spencer's paintings, this original publication provides a comprehensive analysis of the artist's entire oeuvre.

Finding inspiration in his quiet village on the river Thames, early 20th-century painter Stanley Spencer drew on his familiar world to arrive at an art of epic grandeur--though often homely and weird. Biographer Fiona MacCarthy investigates Spencer's life, sets his work in its cultural context, and emphasizes the links between his life and his paintings--and sheds new light on this sensitive and enigmatic artist. 85 color and 30 b&w illustrations. .

England has long been known as a land of gardeners. As such, the rich horticultural designs and and painterly experiments have proved to be of great inspiration for artists such as Turner, Constable and Freud, and this book celebrates their work and theyway in which they invoke the spirit of the garden.

‘Freedom’ is one of the most fiercely contested words in contemporary global experience. This book provides an up-to-date overview from an anthropological perspective of the diverse ways in which freedom is understood and practised in everyday life, including the emergent relationships between governance, autonomy and liberty. The contributors offer a wealth of ethnographic insight from a variety of geographic, cultural and political contexts. Taken together the essays constitute a radical challenge to assumptions about what freedom means in today’s world.

A new approach to sociolinguistics, introducing the study of the social meaning of English words over time, and offering an engaging and entertaining demonstration of lexical sociolinguistic analysis The Social Life of Words: A Historical Approach explores the rise and fall of the social properties of words, charting ways in which they take on new social connotations. Written in an engaging narrative style, this entertaining text matches up sociolinguistic theory with social history and biography to discover which kind of people used what kind of word, where and when. Social factors such as class, age, race, region, gender, occupation, religion and criminality are discussed in British and American English. From familiar words such as popcorn, porridge, café, to less common words like burgoo, califont, etna, and phrases like kiss me quick, monkey parade, slap-bang shop, The Social Life of Words demonstrates some of the many ways a new word or phrase can develop social affiliations. Detailed yet accessible chapters cover key areas of historical sociolinguistics, including concepts such as social networks, communities of practice, indexicality and enregisterment, prototypes and stereotypes, polysemy, onomasiology, language regard, lexical appropriation, and more. The first book to take a focused look at lexis as a topic for sociolinguistic analysis, The Social Life of Words: Introduces sociolinguistic theories and shows how they can be applied to the lexicon Demonstrates how readers can apply sociolinguistic theory to their own analyses of words in English and other languages Provides an engaging and amusing new look at many familiar words, inviting students to explore the sociolinguistic properties of words over time for themselves Part of Wiley Blackwell’s acclaimed Language in Society series, The Social Life of Words is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and linguists working in sociolinguistics, lexical semantics, English lexicology, and the history and development of modern English.

An ambitious history of Britain told through the stories of twenty-five notable structures, from the Iron Age fortification of Maiden Castle in Dorset to the Gherkin. Building Britannia is a chronicle of social, political and economic change seen through the prism of the country's built environment, but also a sequence of closely observed studies of a series of intrinsically remarkable structures: some of them beautiful or otherwise imposing; some of them more coldly functional; all of them with richly fascinating stories to tell. Steven Parissien tells both a national story, tracing how a growing sense of British nationhood was expressed through the country's architecture, and also examines how these structures were used by later generations to signpost, mythologise or remake British history. Rubbing shoulders with some 'expected' building choices – the Roman baths at Aquae Sulis, the early Gothic splendour of Lincoln Cathedral and the Tudor jewel that is Little Moreton Hall – are some striking inclusions that promise to open doors into what will be, for many readers, less familiar areas of social history: these include The Briton's Protection, a Regency pub close in Manchester city centre and the Edwardian Baroque Electric Cinema in Notting Hill, one of the country's oldest working cinemas. Thus as well as identifying the relevance of certain iconic structures to the unfolding of the national story, Building Britannia finds fascination and meaning in the everyday and the disregarded.

Stanley Spencer's paintings are detailed and vibrant and very often depict his deep but eccentric Christian beliefs. One of his greatest achievements were the murals painted in the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, inspired by his war service and showing realistic scenes of everyday life in a war zone, with dreamlike visions drawn from his imagination. Throughout his life Spencer kept a series of journals, noting things down and sketching the things around him, and these journals are now in the Tate Gallery Archive. This book is the first of a three volume set where these journals (though abridged) are published for the first time. The journals give an insight into how Spencer thought and how he worked. Spencer received numerous awards and great recognition throughout his life and was knighted in 1958.

Rich in symbolism and metaphor, and blessed with its own varied and dramatic palette, the garden has proved to be an extremely fertile source of artistic inspiration. In The Garden in Art, acclaimed art historian Debra N. Mancoff reveals the many different ways in which artists from all periods of history - from ancient Egypt to the present day - have employed the motif of the garden. Featuring more than 200 illustrations of both renowned and lesser-known works, the book approaches its subject thematically, exploring such topics as working gardens, the garden through the seasons and artists’ gardens. Complete with a detailed timeline and a suggested list of gardens to visit, The Garden in Art is an absorbing and highly rewarding examination of the meaning and significance of the depiction of the garden.

This roll-call of British artists confirms the dominance and excellence of British art across five centuries, from Blake to Banksy , Turner to Tracey Emin. This highly readable and informative collection of the best of British art showcases magnificent portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Stanley Spencer; landscapes by J. M. W. Turner and David Hockney; satire by William Hogarth and Gilbert & George; sculpture by Henry Moore and Rachel Whiteread; and the latest works by Grayson Perry and Damien Hirst. Each artist is presented in a double-page spread that features a major work, details from the work, a brief biography and fascinating insights into the artist's life and times. Lucinda Hawksley's engaging survey compares the skill of the Elizabethan miniaturists and the magnificence of the High Victorians with the grit of post-war British modernists and the best of the Young British Artists, whose fearless approach to controversial themes make them worthy inheritors of the great traditions of British art. AUTHOR: Lucinda Hawksley is the author of numerous books on art, literature and British history, including 'Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel', 'Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter' and 'The Secret History of Art'. She lectures frequently at the National Portrait Gallery in London, is a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London, and is an award-winning travel writer. 140 illustrations