Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper - Tapa blanda

'A brilliant piece of work that manages to be both comprehensive and coherent as it tells a compelling story about 20th-century English art ... a significant contribution to the history of English culture' - Adam Foulds 'Remarkable ... Harris's insights are based on a close, imaginative reading of collaborations and connections mapped through friendships and unlikely encounters. Her book is full of vivid snapshots, telling detail and beguiling loose ends' - Times Literary Supplement 'Highly eclectic and original ... a book that makes you think freshly about that perennially puzzling question of what it means to be British. It's elegant and wittily written, beautifully designed and splendidly illustrated: altogether, an admirable debut' - Martin Gayford, Sunday Telegraph 'The originality of Romantic Moderns is the extraordinary breadth of its focus ... a joy to read' - Sunday Times 'The only disappointing thing about Romantic Moderns is that it comes to an end' - The Times 'It would be impossible to over-emphasise what a clever book Romantic Moderns is ... not just an important book but a deeply pleasurable one, too' - Guardian

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 Betjemans 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.