Best Selling Books by Peter Blake

An obsession that has spanned almost 30 years, Dylan Thomas''s seminal mid-century ''play for voices'', ''Under Milk Wood'', has long been present in the imagination of Peter Blake. From trips during his Brotherhood of Ruralists'' days to Thomas''s creative refuge at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, to repeated playing of the recorded versions in his treasure trove of a studio, the ''dismays and rainbows'' of these sequences of 110 watercolours, pencil portraits and etchings will form one of Blake''s most substantial single bodies of work.

The story of modern architecture is told here through the lives and works of three men who changed the face of the cities we live in. Le Corbusier gave to modern design a sure and brilliant sense of form; Mies brought an almost Gothic discipline of structure; and Wright heralded a new and dramatic concept of space and freedom. Through this triple focus, Peter Blake provides a perspective on the entire range of twentieth-century architecture.

postcards, but then subverts it to consistently surprising ends." "The city is invaded by penguins and engulfed in icebergs, used as a stage set by dance companies and as a camp site by scout troops, it tranquility shattered by plane crashes, madly over-crowded regattas, fishermen, motorboat racers and ''magic crowds''. On the Piazza San Marco, citizens from ancient times rub shoulders at a cafe with Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, quintessential American tourists happily consuming their own picnic. Teeming with detail, these humorous and highly entertaining pictures show Blake at his imaginative best." --Book Jacket.

In his study of the journalist George Augustus Sala, Peter Blake discusses the way Sala’s personal style, along with his innovations in form, influenced the New Journalism at the end of the nineteenth century. Blake places Sala at the centre of nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals and examines his prolific contributions to newspapers and periodicals in the context of contemporary debates and issues surrounding his work. Sala’s journalistic style, Blake argues, was a product of the very different mediums in which he worked, whether it was the visual arts, bohemian journalism, novels, pornographic plays, or travel writing. Harkening back to a time when journalism and fiction were closely connected, Blake’s book not only expands our understanding of one of the more prominent and interesting journalists and personalities of the nineteenth century, but also sheds light on prominent nineteenth-century writers and artists such as Charles Dickens, Mathew Arnold, William Powell Frith, Henry Vizetelly, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

"For more than half a century, Peter Blake has lived in the mainstream of contemporary architecture and art. As writer, magazine editor, critic, and practicing architect, he has numbered among his friends and acquaintances (and occasionally enemies) virtually all of the major figures of modern architecture, and a good many famous artists as well. In this crisp and lively memoir, he brings them - and the time he shared with them - vividly and memorably to life." "The anecdotes are memorable. Here is Frank Lloyd Wright (regarded by Blake as a perfect example of "the Artist as Ham," though he greatly admired his buildings) exploding at the discovery of young Blake''s savage review of his Autobiography ... Bertrand Russell trying to escape visitors by hiding up a tree in Pennsylvania, as he calmly puffs away on his pipe ... Buckminster Fuller tap-dancing on a drafting table to demonstrate the metrical affinity between bebop and a new mathematical system he is working on ... Mies van der Rohe at work, stolidly gazing at a model of an ITT building while assistants scurry around making alterations ... Marcel Breuer telling how he invented his famous chair ... Philip Johnson delightedly answering a solemn question about heat loss from a visitor to his glass house: "The heat loss is absolutely tremendous" - and beaming from ear to ear." "But No Place Like Utopia also has a deeper theme: how modern architecture, born and raised between the wars and after with a strong sense of social and political idealism, in the 1960s gradually fell back into its ancient role as an elitist pursuit dedicated to flattering the rich and powerful. Only now, as Blake makes clear, can we see the beginnings of a return to its original principles." "From the push-and-pull of politics, culminating in the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period, to heady days in the magazine business, first with Architectural Forum and then with the brilliant but ultimately doomed Architecture Plus, Peter Blake has always been energetically involved with his art and with his era. No Place Like Utopia is thus doubly valuable, as a wonderfully readable historical and personal document, and a pungent commentary on where modern architecture went wrong and right."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In this beautiful and practical book, one of the world''s foremost sailors, Peter Blake, now head of the Cousteau Society, tells you all you need to know about the basics of sailing.

A chronicle of modern architecture and three creative designers whose work has set the tone for the character of the modern city.