It is the end of the Napoleonic Wars and England has just fought its last victorious battle against the French. As Rider Sandman and the other heroes of Waterloo begin to make their way back to England, they find a country where corruption, poverty, and social unrest run rampant, and where "justice" is most often delivered at the end of a hangman's noose. Nowhere in London are the streets as busy as in front of Newgate Prison, its largest penitentiary,...

Explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies.

From London's Soho underworld to the battlegrounds of North Africa, an odyssey following the exploits of an enigmatic camouflage officer--and brilliant painter--during World War II.

John Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist. His paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries: attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in their use of colour. What we learn from his landscapes is that Constable had sharp local knowledge of Suffolk, a clarity of expression of...

"One of Britain's most important contemporary painters, Celia Paul has written a reflective, intimate memoir of her life as an artist. Self-Portrait tells the artist's story in her own words, drawn from early journal entries as well as memory, of her childhood in India and her days as a art student at London's Slade School of Fine Art; of her intense decades-long relationship with the older esteemed painter Lucian Freud and the birth of their son;...

Director Phil Grabsky gained privileged access to David Hockney as he prepared for two remarkable exhibitions at London's Royal Academy of Arts. A Bigger Picture; explored Hockney's return to his native Yorkshire where, using innovative techniques and technologies, he captured the landscape as it changes across the seasons. For 82 Portraits and One Still Life; viewers see Hockney at work under his self-imposed deadline of three days for each painting....

The Du Mauriers -- three beautiful, successful and rebellious sisters. Much has been written about Daphne but here the hidden lives of the sisters are revealed in a riveting group biography.

"Gabriel North has spent two years allowing his family to believe him dead, while he assumes the identity of a hardworking steward on the neglected Three Springs estate. When Gabriel falls in love with Polonaise Hunt, cook at Three Springs, he realizes he must solve the mystery of who tried repeatedly to kill him, before he can ask any woman to share his life."--Author's website.