"Mrs Guggenheim, how many husbands have you had?" "Do you mean my own, or other people's?" Peggy Guggenheim was an American millionairess art collector and legendary lover, whose father died on the Titanic returning from installing the lift machinery in the Eiffel Tower. She lived in Paris in the 1930s and got to know all the major artists - especially the Surrealists. (Later she bullied Max Ernst into marrying her, but was snubbed by Picasso.) When the Second World War broke out, she bought great numbers of paintings from artists fleeing to America; as a Jew she escaped from Vichy, France and set up in New York, where in the 1940s and 1950s she befriended and encouraged the New York School (Jackson Pollock, Rothko, and others) Her emotional life was in constant turmoil - a life of booze, bed and bohemia (mostly rich bohemia). Her favourite husband was a drunken English dilettante writer called Lawrence Vail, but she bedded many others, including Samuel Beckett. Later she moved to Venice. Her autobiography "Out of this Century" is still in print and apparently sells 1000 copies a year in Venice alone. The wayward life (1898-1979) of the voracious art collector and great female patron of world-famous artists.

Peggy Guggenheim: The Life of an Art Addict

Anton Gill

Biographies & Memoirs

HARPER/COLLINS

Empire's Children: Trace Your Family History Across the World

History

Europe

HarperPress

Who Do You Think You Are? Trace Your Family History Back to the Tudors (Bk. 3) by Anton Gill (2006-10-02)

Nick Barratt

Harpercollins

Focusing on Berlin's heyday as a hotbed of both artistic excellence and moral decadence, this survey also assesses the political and historical factors that encouraged - or failed to prevent - the rise of Nazism.

A Dance Between Flames

Abacus (London)

Based on eye-witness accounts and personal memories of colonials and native people, and focusing mainly on India and Africa, this is a sexual and racial history of the British Empire; a history of mixed marriages and mistresses, of brothels and missionaries, and of memsahibs and concubines. Anton Gill argues that sex and race in the context of the Empire reveal much about the true nature of British imperialist ambitions, and that, from the first colonial outpost to the mid-20th century, sexual attitudes at home influenced the behaviour of the colonials abroad. Whether they were taking advantage of greater sexual freedom or trying to prevent any interaction with the local population, sex was, according to the author, a major issue for those who ruled the Empire.

Ruling passions: Sex, race, and empire

BBC Books

A novel based on BBC1 screenplays by Alan Cubitt. Set in Donegal, it tells the story of one family's fortunes while thousands die in the great Irish potato famine of 1845-51. The four O'Phelan brothers fight a dramatic battle for their land and their lives.

The hanging gale

Mad About the Boy: Life and Times of Boy George and " Culture Club "

Arts & Photography

Music

Century

Dance Between Flames, A:berlin Between The Wars

John Murray

This text tells the interwoven stories of the twelve critical years Florenced experienced at the turn of the 15th century, and of the great statue that grew out of the turmoil of those years, and came to be the symbol of the city forever more. "David" was Michelangelo's only colossus; but anyone who was anyone in the Renaissance lived between about 1450 and 1550; and most of them were Florentines; and most were in Florence in 1500 when the sculptor set to work.

Il Gigante: Michelangelo, Florence and the David, 1492-1504

Review

At the start of the 16th century, Italy was a turbulent territory made up of independent states, each at war with or intriguing against its neighbour. In the midst of this turmoil, there existed the greatest concentration of artists that Europe has ever known. Influenced by the rediscovery of the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, artists and thinkers threw off the shackles of the Middle Ages to produce one of the most creative periods in history - the Renaissance. This is the story of 12 years when war, plague, famine and chaos made their mark on volatile Italy, and when a young, erratic genius, Michelangelo Buonarroti, made his great statue - the David. It was to become a symbol not only of the independence and defiance of the city of Florence, but also of the tortured soul who created it.

Il Gigante : Michelangelo, Florence and the David, 1492-1504

World

Headline/Review

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Books by Anton Gill