The Fatal Shore

'An extraordinarily vivid yet authentic account of the birthpangs of a nation. A work of real distinction' Philip Ziegler

A landmark history that confronts Britain’s colonisation of Australia. 
 
In The Fatal Shore, historian and critic Robert Hughes offers a vivid, unflinching account of Britain’s colonisation of Australia; a history built on the forced transportation of convicts and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Drawing on meticulous research, Hughes recreates the harsh realities of the penal system, the endurance of those sent to the colonies, and the profound human cost of empire. 
 
‘An enthralling account… brimming over with rare and pungent characters, and tales of pathos, bravery, and horror’ Peter Matthiessen 
 
‘A unique phantasmagoria of crime and punishment, which combines the shadowy terrors of Goya with the tumescent life of Dickens' Peter Ackroyd, The Times

A unique phantasmagoria of crime and punishment, which combines the shadowy terrors of Goya with the tumescent life of Dickens

A triumph of research, passion and fine writing. I found it an extraordinary and compelling book to read, one of fantastic scope and imagination; truly a tour de force

With its mood and stature...The Fatal Shore is well on its way to becoming the standard opus on the convict years

An enthralling account of the convict settlement of Australia, thoroughly researched and excellently written, brimming over with rare and pungent characters, and tales of pathos, bravery, and horror

Popular history in the best sense...its attention to human detail and its commanding prose call to mind the best work of Barbara Tuchman

Robert Hughes, art critic of Time magazine and twice winner of the American College Art Association's F. J. Mather Award for distinguished criticism, is author of The Shock of the New, and of Heaven and Hell in Western Art. He is also author of the acclaimed Nothing if Not Critical, a work on Frank Auerbach; Barcelona, and Culture of Complaint, essays on the fraying of America. Robert Hughes died in August 2012.

An award-winning epic on the birth of Australia 
 
In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonise Australia. 
 
Documenting the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia, The Fatal Shore is the definitive, masterfully written narrative that has given its true history to Australia. 
 
'A unique phantasmagoria of crime and punishment, which combines the shadowy terrors of Goya with the tumescent life of Dickens' Times

Nothing If Not Critical

A timeline of artistic endeavour from the formal resources of the past to the boom-and-bust media hype of a postmodern age. 
 
In these celebrated essays Robert Hughes explores the lives and works of more than 80 artists, from Hans Holbein to Andy Warhol and beyond, assessing their achievements (or lack of them) and how they altered the history of art for better or for worse. Castigating the excesses of the 1980s New York art scene, with its manufactured celebrity and inflated prices, he argues for the real values of art and outlines the way ahead for a new generation of artists.

Barcelona

'This will certainly become the standard book on Barcelona - a superb achievement and a great pleasure to read' Colm Toibin

Nobody has ever represented [Barcelona's] character more powerfully, or illustrated its claims to self-destiny more persuasively, than has Robert Hughes in this monumental work

Whether untangling the unlikely legends of Wilfred the Hairy or tangling with the likes of Antoni Gaudi, Hughes has shaped Catalan art, architecture and politics into the ultimate guidebooks

A wonderful book, by far the best yet to have appeared in the current flood of books on Spain - and one that fills a genuine gap

Barcelona is unlikely to be rewarded with a better history than this. Robert Hughes is a master of the big canvas, scooping up the detail of social, economic, political and artistic life and producing images of captivating richness

"Robert Hughes is probably the best - and certainly the most accessible - art critic in the world . . . in Barcelona his art-historical and his sociological talents converge in what is often a dazzling collage of Catalan peculiarities" FREDERICK RAPHAEL, Sunday Times 
 
A modern homage to a proud, cosmopolitan city where Gaudí, Picasso and Miró learned how to break all the rules. 
 
Before Spain there was Catalunya, a thriving maritime empire with its own language and Barcelona as its capital, last bastion of resistance to Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Exploring 2000 of the city's history, Robert Hughes takes us down the Ramblas, through the "intestinal windings" of the ancient Gothic Quarter, past the bountiful Boqueria market to the Eixample, showcase of the daring, mannered architecture of Catalan modernisme, before resting at Gaudí's celebrated Sagrada Familia: crazy, unfinished symbol of this fiercely independent city of extremes. 
 
"The pace is brisk, the narrative grasp cool, firm and confident . . . Hughes' prose has the 'capriciousness, symbolic precision and stylistic punch' he attributes to Catalan moustaches" HILARY SPURLING, Daily Telegraph 
 
"Nobody has ever represented Catalonia's character more powerfully, or illustrated its claims to self-destiny more persuasively, than Robert Hughes in this monumental work" JAN MORRIS

Robert Hughes

This is, as you'd expect, a hugely entertaining book

Hughes...deftly intertwines personal and cultural history in this fiercely erudite memoir...it offers a fascinating examination of artistic patrimony and the formation of a critic

Bracingly candid... There isn't a phrase that doesn't reward immediate rereading

A natural raconteur, whose emotional and intellectual engagement with art is so compelling that any subject he touches upon... becomes a subject of immediate interest.  His taut prose gleams with brightly polished, shard-edged mots

Again and again, Hughes expresses enthusiasm for high art that has absorbed something from low art or non-art...as a critic he avoids the jargon of the art world and the obscurities of the academy

A magisterial feat of inquiry, verve and style

Robert Hughes, one of the most illuminating minds ever to have taken on the subjects of art and culture, uses his same critical abilities to give us a brutally intimate account of his early life, up until the time he quit Australia for the United States. 
 
Part memoir, part history lesson, part philosophical tract, Hughes uses his own experiences to examine the nature of art, war, sex, religion, writing and life itself. 
 
Piercing, razor-sharp, and above all, fearless, this is by far Hughes's most personal writing to date.

Robert Hughes

Praise for Things I Didn't Know

Entertaining

This is, as you'd expect, a hugely entertaining book

Edgy and engrossing memoir

Entertaining

This is, as you'd expect, a hugely entertaining book

Edgy and engrossing memoir

Entertaining

This is, as you'd expect, a hugely entertaining book

Edgy and engrossing memoir

Books by Robert Hughes

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