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 By listing many tens of thousands of previously unpublished works, including around 13,000 which do not yet have any form of attribution, this book becomes a unique and indispensable work of reference, one that will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.

'A Grand Design' brings together over 250 of the Museum’s treasures to celebrate the institution's history. The unrivalled collections span centuries of art in virtually every medium - ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, furniture, sculpture, textiles and paintings. The examples have been selected to illustrate how the V&A museum has always sought to establish a canon for the decorative arts, through the continuous acquisition of objects of superior craftsmanship and artistic merit from all over the world.

While the question of the return of cultural objects is by no means a new one, it has become the subject of increasingly intense debate in recent years. This important book explores the removal and the return of cultural objects from occupied communities during the last two centuries and analyses the concurrent evolution of international cultural heritage law. The book focuses on the significant influence exerted by British, U.S. and Australian governments and museums on international law and museum policy in response to restitution claims. It shows that these claims, far from heralding the long-feared dissolution of museums and their collections, provide museums with a vital, new role in the process of self-determination and cultural identity. Compelling and thought-provoking throughout, this book is essential reading for archaeologists, international lawyers and all those involved in cultural resource management.