An obsession with perpetual youth may seem a particularly modern phenomenon, but it is a goal that western scientists and philosophers have aspired to (and worked towards) for the last four hundred years.
Mortal Coil explores the medical, scientific, and philosophical theories behind the quest for the prolongation of human life. It was a conundrum that intrigued Sir Francis Bacon and underpinned the scientific revolution; ideas of ultimate perfectibility, indefinite progress, and worldly rather than heavenly immortality fed directly into the spirit of the Enlightenment and even further into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In today's world of genetic research, cryonics, and nanotechnology, we still seek the same elusive philosopher's stone.
From Adam and Eve to human cloning and designer babies, from seventeenth-century lifestyle guides to science fiction, Haycock's gripping story introduces an array of fascinating individuals—René Descartes, Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Swift, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud as well as a score of unknown figures. Full of extraordinary stories and valuable insights, this is a curious, witty, and captivating exploration into our unceasing desire to live forever.

Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer

Haycock, David Boyd

History

Yale University Press

An obsession with perpetual youth may seem a particularly modern phenomenon, but it is a goal that western scientists and philosophers have aspired to (and worked towards) for the last four hundred years. Mortal Coil explores the medical, scientific, and philosophical theories behind the quest for the prolongation of human life. It was a conundrum that intrigued Sir Francis Bacon and underpinned the scientific revolution; ideas of ultimate perfectibility, indefinite progress, and worldly rather than heavenly immortality fed directly into the spirit of the Enlightenment and even further into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In today's world of genetic research, cryonics, and nanotechnology, we still seek the same elusive philosopher's stone.From Adam and Eve to human cloning and designer babies, from seventeenth-century lifestyle guides to science fiction, Haycock's gripping story introduces an array of fascinating individuals―René Descartes, Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Swift, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud as well as a score of unknown figures. Full of extraordinary stories and valuable insights, this is a curious, witty, and captivating exploration into our unceasing desire to live forever.

Dr William Stukeley (1687-1765) was the most renowned English antiquary of the eighteenth century. This study discusses his life and achievements, placing him firmly within his intellectual milieu, which he shared with his illustrious friend Isaac Newton and with other natural philosophers, theologians and historians. Stukeley's greatest memorial was his work on the stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury: at a time when most historians believed they were Roman or medieval monuments, he proved that they were of much greater antiquity, and his influence on subsequent interpretations of these monuments and their builders was enormous. For Stukeley, these stone circles - the work of "Celtic Druids", were a link in the chain that connected the pristine religion of Adam and Noah with the modern Anglican Church. Historians today belittle such speculations, but Stukeley shared his vision of lost religious and scientific knowledge with many of the great minds of his day; this account shows how throughout his distinguished career his antiquarian researches fortified his response to Enlightenment irreligion and the threat he believed it posed to science and society. DAVID BOYD HAYCOCK is a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford.

William Stukeley: Science, Religion and Archaeology in Eighteenth-Century England

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Boydell Press

Quackery and Commerce in Seventeenth-century London (Medical History Supplement)

Wallis, Patrick

Medical Books

Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL

- The definitive biography of one of Britain's finest equestrian painters - Redefining the legacy of a woman painter at work in a male-dominated environment - Features previously unpublished photographs of the artist at work - Set to publish alongside an exhibition of Lucy Kemp-Welch's work Over the course of a long and very successful career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Lucy Kemp-Welch established herself as one of the leading equestrian painters at work in the UK and one of the country's best-known women artists. David Boyd Haycock's new, extensively illustrated biography of Kemp-Welch brings this remarkable artist and her work back into sharp focus. Born in 1869, Kemp-Welch first came to the art establishment's attention in 1897 when her immense painting, Colt Hunting in the New Forest, caused a sensation at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition; the work was bought for the Nation by the Chantry Bequest in the year of exhibition. In 1915, she illustrated Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, and was commissioned to paint images for the Government during the First World War. Later, the mural Women's Work in the Great War, was placed in the Royal Exchange in London, where it remains to this day. Respected art writer and curator Boyd-Haycock shines new light on Kemp-Welch's life, writing from a 21st-century perspective and reflecting on her as a female painter in a male-dominated environment. Alongside Kemp-Welch's paintings, the book will feature exclusive period photographs of the artist herself, shown at work and in her studio.

Lucy Kemp-Welch 1869-1958: The Life and Work of Lucy Kemp-Welch, Painter of Horses

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Acc Art Books

Paul Nash (1889-1946) was one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century. An official war artist in both the First and the Second World Wars, his paintings include some of the most definitive artistic visions of those conflicts. This new edition of Nash's unfinished autobiography, Outline, is published to coincide with the Tate's major Paul Nash retrospective and incorporates the previously unpublished 'Memoir of Paul Nash' by his wife Margaret. Nash started writing Outline in the late 1930s, but it was left incomplete on his sudden death in 1946. Nash had struggled to complete the book, finding that he could not get beyond the beginning of the Great War. Outline is, nevertheless, one of the great English literary works of the period, for Nash was a gifted writer. His autobiography offers considerable insights into to the young life of the artist himself, and the development of his personal and very distinctive vision. When eventually published in 1949 his incomplete memoir was supplemented by letters that Nash wrote to his wife from the Western Front in 1917. This new edition includes these letters for the vivid insight they give into Nash's experience of the war. The third element of the new edition is Margaret Nash's revealing (and previously unpublished) 1951 memoir of her husband. What emerges through these different narrative voices and perspectives, enhanced with photographs of Paul and Margaret Nash and reproductions of key works from throughout Nash's career, is a fascinating portrait of a major figure in Modern British art.

Paul Nash: Outline, An Autobiography: A New Edition

Lund Humphries

As a painter, illustrator and critic, Paul Nash (1889-1946) was at the forefront of British art in the first half of the twentieth century. Inspired by Willam Blake, Samuel Palmer and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he produced some of the greatest paintings of the First and Second World Wars. In the intervening years he helped introduce the British avant-garde to the thrilling potential of European modernism, experimenting with abstraction and helping to establish the Surrealist movement in Britain. In this thoughtful and comprehensive survey, David Boyd Haycock explores the full course of Nash's eventful career, his profound love of the English landscape, and the psychological forces that led him to pursue a lifelong vision of flight.

Paul Nash

Tate

Nash/Nevinson/Spencer/Gertler/Carrington/Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908 - 1923

History & Criticism

Scala Arts Publishers, Inc.

British Surrealism

LLEWELLYN, SACHA

Meehan, Kirstie

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Following the sellout 2014 publication Paul Nash: Watercolours 1910 - 1946 this revised and expanded edition has been published to coincide with an exhibition of Paul Nash's work in New York, May 2019. The fully illustrated catalogue includes major oils as well as watercolors, prints and photographs and examines one of Britain's most acclaimed artists of the twentieth century.Written by David Boyd Haycock, author of Paul Nash (Tate Publishing, 2002) and the hugely successful A Crisis of Brilliance (Old Street Publishing, 2009), the catalogue charts the whole of Nash's career from his early days before studying at the Slade School of Art, through to his time at the Western Front during World War I as a serving officer and then an official War Artist, and to his mature Surrealist-era works. In the centenary year that marks the official end to the First World War, this publication reflects on Nash's unprecedented impact on British Art and the lingering contemporary power of his works today.This selection of works is drawn from major museum and private collections, and includes several hitherto unseen works, spanning all the major genres and themes present in Nash's diverse career.

Paul Nash: Another Life Another World

Piano Nobile

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Books by Haycock, David Boyd