British painting past and present meet as Ken Howard (b. 1932), one of England’s most popular contemporary artists, follows the trail of world-renowned painter J.M.W. Turner, one of his heroes. Over the last several years Howard has been exploring the Swiss journeys of his illustrious predecessor, using Turner’s travels there as his inspiration for an exciting new body of work. This handsome book contains an introduction to Turner’s experience of the breathtaking Swiss lakes and mountains, some 100 striking new paintings by Howard, and photographs of him at work in the Alpine landscape.

Peter Stansky paints a picture of the changing world in which the Bloomsbury set moved as the watershed to a new and more open society where for example E.M. Forster could write about love between men, and new artforms were in full bloom.

Paintings by Renaissance masters Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Durer, and Hans Holbein the Younger are among the works featured in this lavish volume, the first to comprehensively study the largest collection of early German paintings in America. These works, created in the 14th through 16th centuries in the region that comprises present-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, include religious images - such as "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" by Durer and the double-sided altarpiece "The Dormition of the Virgin" by Hans Schaufelein - as well as remarkable portraits by Holbein and the iconic "Judgment of Paris" by Cranach. In all, more than 70 works are thoroughly discussed and analyzed, making this volume an incomparable resource for the study of this rich artistic period.

The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland's history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland's identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors' wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.

Award-winning foreign correspondent’s cerebral spy novel-cum-love story exposes humanity’s tenuous hold on a vast and relentless world.