Catalog of the exhibition "British design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age" at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Mar. 31-Aug. 12, 2012.

The Art Deco movement influenced design and marketing in many different industries in the 1930s, and the British motor industry was no exception. This fascinating book is divided into two parts; the first explains and illustrates the Art Deco styling elements that link these streamlined car designs, describing their development, their commonality, and their unique aeronautical names, and is liberally illustrated with contemporary images. The book then goes on to portray British streamlined production cars made between 1933 and 1936, illustrated with colour photographs of surviving cars. This is a unique account of a radical era in automotive design.

For anyone interested in interiors, there is so much inspiration available online and in magazines these days of carefully curated spaces and contemporary homes. But what sort of spaces do interior designers themselves live in? British Designers at Home is for anyone curious to find out more about designers, and glean ideas and practical information for their own homes. This engaging and visually enticing book profiles 26 of the most important names in British design and decoration in their own personal spaces. Names include: Alidad; Sarah Barker; Edward Bulmer; Emma Burns; Nina Campbell; Jane Churchill; Octavia Dickinson; Mike Fisher; Veere Grenney; Beata Heuman; Gavin Houghton; Roger Jones; Kit Kemp; Robert Kime; Rita Konig; Penny Morrison; Paolo Moschino; Wendy Nicholls; Guy Oliver; Colin Orchard; Max Rollitt; Carlos Sanchez-Garcia; Daniel Slowik; Justin van Breda; Phillip Vergeylen; and, William Yeoward. Each designer has been profiled and photographed at home - alongside details of their working life and the story of how they became interested in design, they talk at length about the house itself and the thinking behind its design and decoration. From the unexpected to that classic British look, this is an exciting look at modern British interiors.

Bold British Design sees the tastemakers at the epicenter of British interior design share their exclusive advice and inspiration for achieving a bold interior, inspiring you to create your own original, fearless home environment. Designers the world over are increasingly looking to British designers to combine heritage and history with wit and attitude. Interiors Editor Emilio Pimentel-Reid and photographer Sarah Hogan have gained exclusive access to the studios, homes, mood boards and archives of twenty top British creatives. With the interiors creating a visual conversation through the rooms of the houses, the authors reveal the history, craftsmanship, key elements, and inspiration necessary for creating a modern, personal, and stylish interior. Featuring the workspaces and relaxed family homes of artists including furniture designer Sebastian Cox, ceramicist Hitomi Hisono, the celebrated Mini Moderns team and antiques dealer Guy Tobin, Bold British Design shows how a new generation is breaking new ground in interior style and decor.

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

Trained at the Royal College of Art in London where he was a contemporary of David Mellor, Robert Welch was one of the leading British designers of the twentieth century. Strongly influenced both by the artisanal tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement and by Scandinavian Design, he set up his own studio in the mid-1950s, initially working on silverware but then branching out into broader product design. His Alveston tableware range won a Design Council award in 1965 and in the same year he was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry, creating elegant functional designs both for mass production and for one-off commissions. Robert Welch – Design: Craft & Industry traces both the progress of Welch's career and design philosophy and the evolution of the company and products that he created. Lavishly illustrated with exclusive material from the Robert Welch archive, including working sketches and rare archive photography, this is the definitive book on one of the twentieth century's greatest product designers.