David McCann

Appointed in 1938, Sir John Rothenstein was the first director of the Tate to embrace modern art, mounting a series of daring exhibitions and procuring a procession of audacious masterworks that, in the words of one contemporary, ‘completely knocked the stuffiness out of that veritable institution.' So why, since he died in 1991, has his name become a byword for reactionary conservatism? The answer is that from the outset of his career, Rothenstein refused to bow to the patriarchs of the avant-garde. In the 1920s, while they were busy decrying the figurative tradition, Rothenstein was championing a brilliant generation of artists whose work remained firmly rooted within it. In the 1930s, while they advocated a geometrical art of the utmost austerity, Rothenstein used his first curatorial positions to promote a new wave of exciting young British realists. Pitted against the progressives of Hampstead and Bloomsbury and inspired by the anti-vanguardism of his father and Wyndham Lewis, this book charts Rothenstein's earliest efforts to champion modern realistic painting in an age of abstraction. Along the way, it uncovers his selfless and pioneering patronage of artists as diverse as Stanley Spencer, Edward Bawden, Evelyn Dunbar, Paul Nash, Charles Mahoney, and Eric Ravilious. In so doing, it also establishes his importance in the reassessment of twentieth-century figuration going on today.

Keeping the Fires of Figurative Art Burning

John Rothenstein in the Interwar Years

Cillian McGrattan

The 'Sunningdale experiment' of 1973-4 witnessed the first attempt to establish peace in Northern Ireland through power-sharing. However, its provisions, particularly the cross-border 'Council of Ireland', proved to be a step too far. The experiment floundered amid ongoing paramilitary-led violence, finally collapsing in May 1974 as a result of the Ulster Workers' Council strike. Drawing on new scholarship from some of the top political historians working on the period, this book presents a series of reflections on how key protagonists struggled with notions of power-sharing and the 'Irish dimension', and how those struggles inhibited a deepening of democracy and the ending of violence for so long.

Sunningdale, the Ulster Workers' Council strike and the struggle for democracy in Northern Ireland

Korea's modern poetry is filled with many different voices and styles, subjects and views, moves and countermoves, yet it still remains relatively unknown outside of Korea itself. This is in part because the Korean language, a rich medium for poetry, has been ranked among the most difficult for English speakers to learn. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry is the only up-to-date representative gathering of Korean poetry from the twentieth century in English, far more generous in its selection and material than previous anthologies. It presents 228 poems by 34 modern Korean poets, including renowned poets such as So Chongju and Kim Chiha.

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry

"These poems are a wonderful, wide-ranging record of pleasure (or perhaps it is my pleasure reading them), for even those on death or persecuted poets have beauty and restraint and all of them, whether on seabirds or a Korean wedding, are touched with the poet’s signature wit and sense of astonishment." -- Paul Hamill, Poet Laureate, Tompkins County, NY

The Way I Wait for You

Darcy Henton

The shocking account of the physical and sexual abuse at two schools run by a religious order.

David McCann

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