The recent release of archives relating to the Cyprus War of 1974 shed completely fresh light on the lead-up to the Turkish landing on the island and its aftermath. This book, based on the records from the British and American governments, for the first time unpicks the truth behind thi...

Borrowing its title from Gregg Araki’s 2005 film, in which the camera’s contemplation of the male body encourages us to feel that body, and covering a broad span of subjects and films, Mysterious Skin offers a wider, more representative picture of the depiction of the male bo...

No fewer than seven hundred Civil War films have been made by Hollywood from early silent days to the present, from the epoch-making Birth of a Nation, through The Red Badge of Courage and Gone With the Wind to the recent Glory, Ride with the Devil and...

Storm on Horseback is both a dramatic history and, uniquely, a traveller’s guide to the extraordinary heritage of the Seljuks in Turkey.

Who are the Turks and where did they come from? The successive empires that they created in a whirlwind of conquests from China to Nort...

Drawing on a wonderful array of sources, from fashion magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue to department store records and surviving garments, The American Look presents a rich and multi-faceted exploration of the development of a distinct New York fashion st...

Directed by the great Jean Renoir, La Grande Illusion (1937) is the finest of all anti-war films and a cinematic masterwork. Other films oppose war by showing its horror. Renoir’s film holds the horror at arm’s length to give us a clearer view of it. A prisoner-of-war drama, ...

Lorca, Buñuel and Dalí were, in their respective fields of poetry and theatre, cinema, and painting, three of the most imaginative creative artists of the twentieth century; their impact was felt far beyond the boundaries of their native Spain. But if individually they have been exami...

George Hay, 8th Earl of Kinnoull, was an unconventional ambassador. A Scottish aristocrat who had been imprisoned for his Jacobite sympathies and almost bankrupted by his involvement in the South Sea Bubble, Lord Kinnoull had no previous diplomatic experience when he was unexpectedly ap...

Ingmar Bergman was the last and arguably the greatest of the old-style European auteurs and his influence across all areas of contemporary cinema has continued to be considerable since his death in July 2007. Drawing on interviews with collaborators and original research, this book puts...

The Battle of Kosovo of 1389 holds enormous significance in the formation of modern Balkan nation states, especially among South Slav and Serbian nationalist circles. What has given this single battle such resonance, even more than six centuries later, and what does it reveal about the ...

The Safavid dynasty, which reigned from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth century, links medieval with modern Iran. The Safavids witnessed wide-ranging developments in politics, warfare, science, philosophy, religion, art and architecture. But how did this dynasty manage to produce ...

Du rififi chez les hommes (1955), directed by the exiled American film director Jules Dassin, recounts the nail-biting tale of a Parisian gangster heist gone wrong. Famed for its extended dialogue free robbery sequence, it is both a classic French film noir and one of the greates...

Chapaev is the most popular film of the Soviet era. Directed by Georgi and Sergei Vasilev, it tells of the legendary exploits of the Red Army Commander Vasili Ivanovich Chapaev during the Russian Civil War. Its greatest fan was Joseph Stalin, who saw it 38 times at late-night sho...

Modern myths, cheap trash or the objects of fetishist desire?

Most people know something about Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Wonder Woman, even if what they know is heavily filtered through film and television versions, rather than the comics in which they first appeared. Yet,...

The Bakhtiyari are one of the most important nomadic societies in the Middle East but although this tribe has many powerful romantic associations it has also been the subject of much misunderstanding, even today. This penetrating examination of the Bakhtiyari in Iran explores their powe...

Determined to discover the Albanian that lies behind so many stereotypes and preconceptions, Robin Hanbury-Tenison and his wife Louella crossed the country on horseback, from Theth in the north to the border with Greece in the south. In the footsteps of Byron, Edward Lear and Edith Durh...

What hope is there for Africa? Since the heady and hopeful days of decolonisation the story seems to be one of unrelenting disaster -- revolution; brutal military dictatorship; ethnic conflict and even genocide; civil war; state-threatening corruption; economic failure; and, in places, ...

Yve Lomax is a remarkable artist and writer, who has established a practice of writing that is unique within contemporary Fine Art. Her work has helped to establish a new discipline of Art Writing, which provides a particular space for a critical and analytical approach to writing withi...

In February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Was this the final chapter in the break up of Yugoslavia and the successful conclusion to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s?  Or was it just one more wrong turn in the path to stability in the Balkans which has set a dangerous ...

When he was assassinated in 1896, Nasir al-Din Shah had sat on the Peacock throne for nearly half a century. A colorful, complex figure, he is frequently portrayed as indolent and self-indulgent. Yet he was in many ways an effective ruler who displayed exceptional resilience in the fac...

In 1941 the British and the Russians occupied Iran. The autocratic Reza Shah was forced to abdicate under British pressure and there followed one of the most turbulent periods in modern Iranian political history. Iran became the scene of political turmoil involving numerous factions and...

Clint Eastwood is one of the world’s most popular action stars, who has matured into one of America’s finest producer-directors.  Entertaining, illuminating and packed with information, Aim for the Heart is the first book to cover his full life in the movies, showing how as ...

Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 -- and the overt manipulation of this precedent by Russia in its war with Georgia and South Ossetia shortly afterwards -- has focused the world’s attention once again on the Balkans. But Albania’s role within the region remains little ...

The manufacture and trade in crafted goods and the men and women who were involved in this industry--including metalworkers, ceramicists, silk weavers, fez-makers, blacksmiths and even barbers--lay at the social as well as the economic heart of the Ottoman empire. This comprehensive his...

A ruthless autocrat who blinded and killed his own sons, but was revered as a hero by his own people.  A brilliant warrior who restored his nation’s pride and territorial integrity by waging war on the foreign occupying forces, but chose an English knight to be his ambassador in the ...