This book sets a new standard as a work of reference. It covers British and Irish art in public collections from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, and it encompasses nearly 9,000 painters and 90,000 paintings in more than 1,700 separate collections. The book includes as well pictures that are now lost, some as a consequence of the Second World War and others because of de-accessioning, mostly from 1950 to about 1975 when Victorian art was out of fashion. By listing many tens of thousands of previously unpublished works, including around 13,000 which do not yet have any form of attribution, this book becomes a unique and indispensable work of reference, one that will transform the study of British and Irish painting.

The History of Britain and Ireland traces the key events that shaped the societies living in the British Isles from the earliest times to the present day. From the Roman conquest of 43 CE to the Norman conquest of 1066, from the Elizabethan age of Shakespeare to the Victorian age of Charles Dickens, and from the Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries to the Iraq and Afghan wars of the 21st century, this beautifully illustrated book provides a definitive visual chronicle of the most colorful and defining episodes in British history. The story begins at least half a million years ago when humans started to make their home in Britain. Around 3000 BCE, the first Britons were making their mark on the landscape at remarkable sites such as the stone village of Skara Brae in Orkney and the earliest earthworks at Stonehenge. They entered the annals of recorded history with Julius Caesar's exploratory expedition across the Channel in the late summer of 55 BCE. From then on the small group of islands off the west coast of Europe was never far from the center of world affairs: pioneering the industrial revolution, creating the largest empire the world has ever seen, fighting two world wars in the 20th century, and finally coming to terms with a new status in a fast-changing global economy. The History of Britain and Ireland combines a spread-by-spread narrative of events with a wealth of supporting features on the decisive turning points in the long and fascinating story of the British Isles, and on the outstanding individuals-from Geoffrey Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I to Charles Darwin and Winston Churchill-who helped shape that story.