Horace Walpole, famous for his novel The Castle of Otranto and his gothick castle-villa, Strawberry Hill, has been oddly shielded by his previous admirers. The most famous of these was W. S. Lewis, a rich American scholar, who collected virtually all of Walpole's surviving letters and papers and edited them in forty-eight impressive volumes. He was however a conventional man of his times and could not bring himself to acknowledge Walpole's homosexuality and its implications. R. W. Ketton-Cremer, who wrote what was otherwise a very good biography of Walpole, was similarly evasive. Timothy Mowl's study of Horace Walpole is the first to give a complete and convincing picture of the whole man. It is the first to show that, despite his aristocratic connections (he was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister) Horace Walpole was a sexual and social outsider whose talents as a publicist were used to serve his own agenda. Also revealed for the first time is Walpole's passionate affair with the 9th Earl of Lincoln. The ending of that relationship, and Walpole's subsequent resentment of Lincoln's relatives, affected his judgment, friendships and emotions for the rest of his life. This book provides an honest and radical reassessment of one of the most influential men of taste of the eighteenth-century, and is reissued to coincide with a major Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition dedicated to Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. 'This is a lively, provocative and hugely entertaining book. Whatever one makes of Dr Mowl's interpretation of Walpole's career, it is always intelligently argued, and presented with a polemical vigour and sense of style which are worthy of his subject's own.' John Adamson, Sunday Review '. . . he is lively and convincing on the gradual accretions to Strawberry Hill, and often shrewd on the character of his subject . . .' Pat Rogers, Times Literary Supplement 'In general, Mowl writes delightfully, and there are witticisms that Horry (Horace Walpole) himself would relish.' Bevis Hillier, The Spectator 'In this vivid and entertaining biography, Horace Walpole is properly outed.' Duncan Sprott, Gay Times '. . .he presents the most credible picture of the man and his achievement to date.' Martin Postle, Apollo 'This wicked, enjoyable book should provoke wide debate.' David Watkin, Evening Standard
William Beckford had two lives: one real and sensational, the other an elegant forgery he invented in retirement after the young Disraeli mischievously sent him a homoerotic epic based loosely on Beckford's own career. Biographers have been bemused by Beckford's faked letters and dream encounters with celebrities, but his real life was far more significant: he is the pivotal Romantic between Horace Walpole and Byron. Beckford was reared in exotic isolation in a Palladian palace where he grew up obsessed with dark grottoes, towers and images of the living dead. Rushed into marriage by an apprehensive mother, he indulged his actual passions (both legal and paedophile) until a Tory administration staged a sex scandal that exiled him. In his absence his novel, Vathek was treacherously pirated. Returned to England, Beckford flung his wealth into the creation of Fonthill Abbey, which, by its shadowy vistas and glamorous camp furnishings, paved the way for the wildest excesses of Victorian taste.
John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner were opposites. Both, however, had a profound influence on the way Britain looks today. This work charts their contemporaneous rise as style warriors. In Pevsner's case, it examines his transformation from a respected German art historian, specializing in Mannerism, to the determined exponent of international modernism, intent on the imposition of a functional townscape upon post-war Britain. In Betjeman's case, it explores his conversion from idealistic young journalist, acclaiming the dawn of the machine age, concrete, steel and all, to the great lyric poet, who, in mourning the destruction of our historic landmarks and towns, effectively launched the Heritage Industry. As Timothy Mowl reveals in this study, the two rivals became, behind a polite facade, irreconcilable foes who fought for the supremacy of their alternative visions until the same fatal illness struck them down.
A general survey of what was being built in England and Wales during the Commonwealth years, 1642-60, using the career of architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652) as a framework to demonstrate the gradual move from rich chaos to dull order. Covers the stark churches, the emerging architects of the Puritan order, country houses, London, the universities, gardens, and four large regions. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs and drawings. Distributed in the US by St. Martin's Press. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Oxfordshire, more than any other English county, has historic gardens and landscapes of all periods and in all styles, ranging from the medieval remains of the Bower of Henry II's mistress Rosamund Clifford at Woodstock to the celebrated French chef, Raymond Blanc's series of garden enclosures. This work talks about these gardens.
This book addresses critical challenges for university renewal, and sketches critical issues in Hong Kong's higher education that have global implications. Contributors to the book were originally gathered for a conference funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC) of Hong Kong, and took as their starting point the work of the Carnegie Foundation on The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. With the worldwide move towards public accountability, academics live in a climate of assessment and must constantly adapt to new pressures. This book presents a focus on leadership in learning, on the basis of which academics can reconcile pressures and paradoxes, transcend the system, and move on to a public domain where teaching and research can be integrated in scholarly discourse and practice. The shared professional insights, as articulated by the contributors to this book, will be most helpful to academics who are navigating through these turbulent waters. Emerging from the major thrusts of the selected papers are three thematic divisions: Critical and Creative Thinking, Motivation in Learning, and Collaboration in Teaching and Learning. The targeted readers include academics, administrators and policy-makers in higher education. The primary focus is on academics as teachers to whom the contributors can communicate authentically as frontline practitioners in an optimistic tone without being naive. Together, the chapters transcend local concerns, and contribute to a developing international discourse on the impact of scholarship of teaching on learning. Rather than advocating certain approaches from successful experiences, the book generates ideas for research into teaching, making transparent the dynamics of learning.
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