For nearly two decades, from 1966, Thea Porter created clothes made from sumptuous fabrics that drew inspiration from a view of the exotic Middle East. Combining richly patterned silks with antique fabrics, her clothes were a must for music and film stars such as Pink Floyd, Crystal Gayle, Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand. Fashion magazines all over the world featured her latest styles and Thea became a key member of the innovative group of British designers that included Ossie Clark, Zandra Rhodes and Jean Muir. During her lifetime she won huge acclaim, and her place in the history of British fashion was ensured when she won Designer of the Year in 1972. Thea Porter was included in several landmark exhibitions on twentieth-century fashion. 'Thea Porter's Scrapbook' is her story in her own words, an unpublished autobiography she put together before her death in 2000. Edited by her daughter, Venetia, and with an essay by fashion historian Amy de la Haye, this book, illustrated with sketches, letters, press cuttings and photographs, describes Thea's family history and upbringing in Syria, and, through her own letters, her years as a student in London after the Second World War and her life in the cosmopolitan city of Beirut during the 1950s and 1960s.

'Thea's are the only clothes I never throw away.' Joan Collins

Cette monographie retrace l'évolution de la pratique de l'artiste libanaise Laure Ghorayeb, de l'écriture au dessin et à la peinture. Seconde publication dans la série de la Saradar Collection, l'ouvrage inclut des textes de Venetia Porter, Maha Azizé Sultan, un entretien avec l'artiste et une sélection de dessins, peintures et poèmes de l'artiste de 1960 à 2017. Reconnue pour ses dessins complexes et détaillés à l'encre, son œuvre représente des chroniques de sa vie, ainsi que des événements et des personnes qui ont eu un impact sur celle-ci, tels que les guerres civiles libanaises et les membres de sa famille.

Reflections: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa brings together an extraordinary collection of work from the British Museum for the first time. The contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa is rich and vibrant. Whether living in their countries of birth or in diaspora, the featured artists are part of the globalised world of art. Here we see artists responding to and making work about their present, histories, traditions and cultures, reflecting on a part of the world that has experienced extraordinary change in living memory.The British Museum has been acquiring the work of Middle Eastern and North African artists since the 1980s, and the collection - principally works on paper - is one of the most extensive in the public sphere. Collected within the context of a museum of history, the works offer insights into the nature of civil societies, the complex politics of the region, and cultural traditions in their broadest sense, from the relationship with Islamic art, to the deep engagement with literature.The introduction to the book by curator Venetia Porter explores the history of the collection and the works included. The essential framework for understanding the politics and context within which the artists are working is provided by Charles Tripp's essay. The works are grouped into seven chapters, each beginning with a short introduction. The authors explore the selection within themes such as faith, abstraction and the female gaze.

Europeans are in denial. Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, they are increasingly distancing themselves from their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But while the legacy of Islam and the Middle East is in danger of being airbrushed out of Western history, its traces can still be detected in some of Europe's most recognisable monuments, from Notre-Dame to St Paul's Cathedral. In this comprehensively illustrated book, Diana Darke sets out to redress the balance, revealing the Arab and Islamic roots of Europe's architectural heritage. She tracks the transmission of key innovations from the great capitals of Islam's early empires, Damascus and Baghdad, via Muslim Spain and Sicily into Europe. Medieval crusaders, pilgrims and merchants from Europe later encountered Arab Muslim culture in journeys to the Holy Land. In more recent centuries, that same route through modern-day Turkey connected Ottoman culture with the West, leading Sir Christopher Wren himself to believe that Gothic architecture should more rightly be called 'the Saracen style', because of its Islamic origins. Recovering this overlooked story within the West's long history of borrowing from the Islamic world, Darke sheds new light on Europe's buildings and offers rich insights into the possibilities of cultural exchange.

Dressing up. Partying all night. This is the world of 1970s fashion, and this book is your backstage pass. Featuring over 25 exclusive interviews with the movers and shakers of the 70s scene, including Grace Coddington, Zandra Rhodes, Willy van Rooy, Marie Helvin, Pat Cleveland, Elsa Peretti and more, Behind the Gloss lifts the lid on the hedonistic, wild world of the 1970s. They were the designers who dressed the Rolling Stones, Charlotte Rampling and Catherine Deneuve; the photographers who shot Diana Ross, Lauren Hutton and Jerry Hall; the fashion editors, hairstylists and make-up artists who worked with some of the most beautiful women in the world; and they would change the fashion world forever. Featuring images, sketches and Polaroids exclusively sourced from the contributors' archives, Behind the Gloss tells the revelatory story of the decade of experimentation.

Nancy Durrell was a woman famous for her silences. Anaïs Nin said 'I think often of Nancy's most eloquent silences, Nancy talking with her fingers, her hair, her cheeks, a wonderful gift. Music again.' As the first wife Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet, it is perhaps surprising that she is an unknown entity, a constant presence in the biographies of Durrell and others in the Bloomsbury set, yet always a shadowy figure, beautiful and enigmatic. But who was the woman who was with Durrell during the most important years of his development as a writer? Joanna Hodgkin decides to retrace her mother's fascinating story: the escape from her toxic and mysterious family; the years in bohemian literary London and Paris in the 1930s; marriage to Durrell and their discovery of the 'Eden' of pre-war Corfu and her desperate struggle to survive in Palestine alone with a small child as the British Mandate collapsed. Amateurs in Eden is a fascinating biography of a literary marriage and of an unusual woman struggling to live an independent life.