Here are 100 books that The Man in the Red Coat fans have personally recommended if you like
The Man in the Red Coat.
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I’m not entirely sure how to describe myself other than as a committed writer and a devoted reader. Mine has been a fairly unconventional career. It has moved me from one spot on the globe to another and has placed me on both ends of the publishing equation—first, as a book publisher, and, next, as the author of a variety of books. I’m certain of a single shared fact: that no matter whether fiction or non-fiction, regardless of the subject, a story always rests on the success of engaging the reader.
How to begin? In 1520, Albrecht Dürer, the most celebrated artist in Northern Europe, sailed to Zeeland to see a beached whale with the intention of drawing its likeness. But this fact is only the starting-off point for a memorably vivid journey that straddles countless subjects. Each chapter is anchored in a particular image by Dürer. There is a seamlessness to Hoare’s prose in this book and I marveled at his gifts of insight and observation.
A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN OBSERVER BEST ART BOOK OF 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2022
'This is a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world' Patti Smith
'Everything Philip Hoare writes is bewitching' Olivia Laing
An illuminating exploration of the intersection between life, art and the sea from the award-winning author of Leviathan.
Albrecht Durer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse - the first works mass produced by any artist - to his hyper-real…
Lerner's memoir of approaching adulthood in the mid-sixties is deliciously readable, but deceptively breezy. His family is affluent, his school engaging, his friends smart and fun. He has his first car, and drives with abandon. The American moment promises unlimited possibility. But political and cultural upheavals are emerging, and irresistible.…
I lived in Paris for six months when I researched and wrote my first Paris book, One Thousand Buildings of Paris, walking every quarter of Paris including some rather dicey areas. I discovered most Parisians don’t wander very far from their own neighborhoods, and casual tourists tend to stay in the center. The first time my boyfriend and I went to Paris together, I planned daily excursions to all the neighborhoods where he had never been. We became flaneurs (wanderers) at outdoor markets, small museums, parks, and we ventured into unknown spaces. There is always something fascinating to discover in Paris and new ways to gain a sense of history.
Written by a prominent British ceramicist, this memoir is remarkable for its research and depth into the background of the writer’s forgotten Jewish heritage and five generations of his ancestors, the Ephrussis, who immigrated to Paris where, in the Nineteenth Century, they built a banking dynasty from Vienna to Paris.
After inheriting a collection of 264 netsuke—Japanese wood and ivory carvings—de Waal starts digging into the past to uncover the mystery behind the netsuke and why they survived when most of the family perished at the hands of the Nazis.
This is another WWII story that illuminates the tragic events of the period and the life of wealthy patrons of the arts and their interaction with artists in Paris.
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie's Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.
From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siecle Paris, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo, Edmund de Waal traces the netsuke's journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.
World War 2 has always interested me and my curiosity was strengthened a few years ago when my mother told me I was born illegitimate and my father had been the civil engineer building a nearby bomber airfield and a lodger with her parents. She was ashamed of what happened and lost contact with my father before I was born. Consequently, I wrote my first novel Unplanned. I then met the daughter of the Berlin mother in Abandoned in Berlin, and found itnatural to pursue this story, given what I had discovered about my own upbringing. The effort has taught me to seek to forgive but never to forget.
Here is a story of persistence and justice that inspired the movie Woman in Gold. By taking on the Austrian government, the portrait painted by Gustav Klint is eventually returned to its rightful owner. Once more we witness the reluctance of authorities to acknowledge what was perpetrated during Nazi times.
Taking place in Vienna, the events coincide with the experiences of the protagonist in my own book. The mother fled Germany in late 1937 and lived in Vienna until early 1941. She met her husband there, married him while he was in prison, heard that the Jewish children in her orphanage were killed, and witnessed her mother’s death. “It was the worst experience in my life,” she says.
I wish that the perseverance and outcome shown in this story could be mirrored in my own book, but rules introduced by West Germany in the 1950s make this impossible.…
The true story that inspired the movie Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. The Award-Winning Nazi Art Theft Saga Winner of the Marfield National Award for Arts Writing Winner of a California Book Award Library Journal Top 10 Book of 2012 Christian Science Monitor Top 15 Nonfiction of 2012 Best Huffington Post Art Book 2012 Top 12 Nonfiction 2012 of Examiner.com
The spellbinding story, part fairy tale, part suspense, of Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, one of the most emblematic portraits of its time; of the beautiful, seductive Viennese Jewish salon hostess who sat for it;…
Lerner's memoir of approaching adulthood in the mid-sixties is deliciously readable, but deceptively breezy. His family is affluent, his school engaging, his friends smart and fun. He has his first car, and drives with abandon. The American moment promises unlimited possibility. But political and cultural upheavals are emerging, and irresistible.…
In the acknowledgments in my novel I mention my late mother “who might have wanted to flee, but didn’t.” My pregnant mother driving eight hours down the Fraser Canyon. Baby me “in a cardboard box” in the front seat, my brothers, armed with pop guns, in the back. My dad, having finally found work, gone ahead alone. We didn’t tell this as a story of her courage and strength. It was considered funny. But after I became a mother, I had a clearer vision of the stress and poverty of my mother’s life. My novel, and the ones I’m recommending, show compassion for women as mothers, and for their children, who are sometimes left behind.
In modern-day England, a teenager, George (Georgia), has lost her mother. In Renaissance Italy, Francesco del Cossa, a young and talented fresco painter, is motherless as well. Smith gives us a choice: Read George’s half of the book first, or read Francesco’s. Whichever we choose, the lives of these two young people are intricately interlaced. Their sadness and joy; their way of looking at the world around them. George has been to see a fresco in Italy created by Francesco. She is in a complex, post-death conversation with her mother, filled with longing. Francesco (or should that be Francesca?) tells his/her own life story and observes George in hers. I loved the challenging, poetic, playful, and tender nature of this book.
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2015 WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2014 WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD
'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard
How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s.
Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless,…
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls Of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods.
There are many ways to approach history. Donna Lucey brilliantly chose to usher readers into the world of the Gilded Age via the captivating canvases of that era’s most sought-after portraitist, John Singer Sargent. There are always more stories lurking behind Sargent’s luxurious depictions of his subjects, and Lucey gets beneath the paint and the posing to give us her own picture of four very real women whose lives are far more nuanced than any portrait sitting can convey.
With unprecedented access to newly discovered sources, Donna M. Lucey illuminates the lives of four women painted by the society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny clairvoyance, Sargent's portraits hint at the mysteries, passions and tragedies that unfolded in his subjects' lives. Elsie Palmer carried on a labyrinthine love life in a Rocky Mountain castle; Elizabeth Chanler stepped into a maze of infidelity with her best friend's husband; as the veiled image of Sally Fairchild emerged on the canvas, her sister was lured into an ill-fated life in art; and shrewd Isabella Stewart Gardner collected both art and young men.…
I’ve been obsessed with Paris since the age of five. For most of my life I’ve travelled there regularly and read every book on the subject I could find. After working as a beauty editor, I decided to try to make my passion my day job. That inspired me to write Paris Dreaming: What the City of Light Taught Me About Life, Love & Lipstick, and launch a travel consultancy business, Paris for Dreamers. I work with like-minded lovers of Paris, who constantly yearn for the city’s beguiling beauty and fascinating history, and who are always planning their next trip—or visiting Paris virtually, through the pages of a book!
Think of this as the literary equivalent of a Gobelins tapestry, its various threads expertly woven together to tell a grand and colourful story. McAuliffe has expertly intertwined the narratives and anecdotes of some of the most fascinating of Parisians to create a wonderfully engaging overview of the Belle Époque, that fabled and hedonistic between-wars Parisian era. By telling the history of these times through the eyes of the key players who lived—and shaped—these times, McAuliffe has produced a book that almost reads like a novel. It’s a fabulous treatment she also employed for her subsequent books that explored later periods of Paris history: Twilight of the Belle Epoque, When Paris Sizzled,and Paris on the Brink.
A humiliating military defeat by Bismarck's Germany, a brutal siege, and a bloody uprising-Paris in 1871 was a shambles, and the question loomed, "Could this extraordinary city even survive?" Mary McAuliffe takes the reader back to these perilous years following the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and France's uncertain venture into the Third Republic. By 1900, Paris had recovered and the Belle Epoque was in full flower, but the decades between were difficult, marked by struggles between republicans and monarchists, the Republic and the Church, and an ongoing economic malaise, darkened by a rising tide of virulent anti-Semitism. Yet…
I’m American but I’ve been a Francophile for ages. I didn’t get a chance to visit France until well into adulthood. So much history lives in France and it’s been my joy to illuminate it for readers who tell me they feel transported. There is no higher compliment, in my mind. I’ve been writing novels for thirty years, set in the Rocky Mountains, America’s heartland, and the scenic villages of France. The Bennett Sisters Mysteries are now up 18 books in the series, featuring settings from Paris to Champagne to the Dordogne, with more in the works. I must go back to France to research, oui?
I love weaving history into my mysteries so I was drawn to this dark tale of Paris in the Belle Époque. An English girl goes to Paris to study art but, desperately poor, throws her fate into the hands of some shady characters. The atmosphere and scene-setting of Paris during a terrible rainy winter are unforgettable.
Extra material includes a deleted scene and a Q&A with Imogen Robertson
Maud Heighton came to Lafond's famous Academy to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris eats money. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling joys of the Belle Epoque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, Maud takes a job as companion to young, beautiful Sylvie Morel. But Sylvie has a secret: an addiction to opium. As Maud is drawn into the Morels' world of elegant luxury, their secrets become…
Before I could start writing Into the Lion’s Mouth, I spent a lot of time researching the medieval and renaissance Venice. I was astounded to see how relevant that history is to today. Not only are there many parallels that can be drawn between the past and today there is so much to learn about the consistency of human nature. I find myself currently gravitating towards books that mix history and fiction and these are some of my favorites.
A warm inn, and a stranger’s tale gather together a group of travelers as they become fascinated by the story of three gifted children that is sweeping the land. I loved the way this book brought the story of the people in the inn and the marvelous children together step by step. Peppered with real historical figures and legends this book is a must-read for the middle-grade medieval enthusiast.
A Newbery Honor Book Winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award
An exciting and hilarious medieval adventure from the bestselling author of A Tale Dark and Grimm. Beautifully illustrated throughout by Hatem Aly!
A New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Editor's Choice A New York Times Notable Children's Book A People Magazine Kid Pick A Washington Post Best Children's Book A Wall Street Journal Best Children's Book An Entertainment Weekly Best Middle Grade Book A Booklist Best Book A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Book A Publishers Weekly Best Book A School Library Journal…
As an authentic working-class author, I’m inevitably drawn to books that describe ordinary working lives, as I can instantly relate to the familiar subject matter. And these five books are classics of the genre. They are eye-openers, page turners, brilliantly written by exceptionally gifted writers, depicting the lives of ordinary folk and the poor and downtrodden, in an incredibly accessible and affordable format - The Novel.
Although not from a working-class background himself, a young George Orwell set out to discover and report on the conditions of working-class lives in Paris and London during the early part of the 20th Century.
I love this book because, although written nearly a hundred years ago, it remains vitally resonant today. Orwell left the relative safety of middle-class suburbia and went on the road, working in Parisian restaurants as a dishwasher and joining the massed ranks of homeless tramps in the UK, even venturing down to Kent to join the ‘Hop-Pickers.’
From the author of 1984, the classic semi-autobiographical story about the adventures of a penniless British writer in two cities.
Down and Out in Paris and London follows the journey of a writer among the down-and-out in two great cities. Without self-pity and often with humor, this novel is Orwell at his finest-a sobering, truthful protrayal of poverty and society.
I'm a former television news producer who worked for Barbara Walters and Peter Jennings at ABC News, and at Dateline NBC and CBS’s 60 Minutes. I was always a journalist, but mid-career, I switched lanes from TV to writing. Since then, I've contributed essays and stories to many publications, among them Vogue, Travel & Leisure, The New York Times, BBC Travel, and others. I mostly write about travel, but also cover beauty, wellness, international development, and health. I'm the recipient of five Lowell Thomas Awards for excellence in travel journalism, including one for Travel Journalist of the Year. My book of essays, A Hard Place to Leave: Stories From a Restless Life comes out in May 2022.
California-born Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher’s contribution to our culture was revolutionary. Before her, no man or woman wrote about food as they might about art: what was noteworthy in the meal, how the cauliflower was cooked or the paté presented, and how all of it made her feel. She is perhaps best known for her masterpiece The Gastronomical Me, her memoir about her sensory awakening around food, cooking, and love when she moved to Dijon, France. After returning to the States, Fisher moved with her two daughters to Aix-en-Provence following World War II. By now, the memoir of Provence—the farmhouse, lavender fields, and dappled summer light—have become a genre unto themselves. But as with everything this trailblazer wrote, few have ever done is as well or with such exquisite understatement as Fisher did in Map of Another Town.
It is a soulful and beautifully atmospheric chronicle of building…
'I was a brash newcomer to it, and yet when I first felt the rhythm of its streets and smelled its ancient smells, I said, 'Of course,' for I was once more in my own place, an invader of what was already mine.'
M.F.K. Fisher moved to Aix-en-Provence with her daughters after the Second World War. In Map of Another Town, she traces the history of this ancient and famous town, known for its tree-lined avenues, pretty fountains and ornate façades. Beyond the tourist sights, Fisher introduces us to its inhabitants: the waiters and landladies, down-and-outs and local characters all…
