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10 Vintage Non-Fiction Recommendations

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Extraordinary stories from ordinary people

My mother and other missing persons

On Chapel Sands

The Sunday Times bestseller - Laura Cumming, prize-winning author and art critic, uncovers the mystery of her mother’s disappearance as a child

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD** 
 
Uncovering the mystery of her mother's disappearance as a child: Laura Cumming, prize-winning author and art critic, takes a closer look at her family story. 
 
'A modern masterpiece' Guardian 
 
Autumn 1929 - a young girl is kidnapped from a beach. Five agonising days go by before she is discovered safe and well in a nearby village. The child remembers nothing of these events and at home, nobody ever speaks of them again. 
 
Decades later, Laura Cumming delves into the mystery surrounding her mother's disappearance. Examining everything from old family photos to letters, tickets and recipes, she uncovers a series of secrets and lies perpetuated not just by her family but by the whole community and in doing so unlocks a mystery almost a century old. 
 
'A moving, many-sided human story of great depth and tenderness, and a revelation of how art enriches life' Sunday Times 
 
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 
Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize

*Memoir of the Year* How we see -- and who see and what secrets they choose to share -- is at the heart of this exquisitely composed memoir... A peerless detective story that keeps you guessing to the end

On Chapel Sands is much more than a search for truth. It is a moving, many-sided human story of great depth and tenderness, and a revelation of how art enriches life. In short, a masterpiece

Cumming skilfully withholds key twists in the tale, revealing them at just the right moment. There are surprises, but no shocks. Her prose is too elegant for such gaudiness – composed and restrained but empathetic

Brilliant... This book is a love letter to her [Cumming's] mother, whose warmth, articulacy and survival instincts shine though. It's also an intimate portrait of a village community, with its storybook characters (butcher, baker, dairyman, bell-ringer, gravedigger) and their wonderful old-fashioned names

By turns beautiful, wistful, and ominous… the reasons behind the kidnap, and the repurcussions, are every bit as complex as any served up by fiction, and, oddly enough, the dénouement -- or succession of dénouements -- is just as satisfying, perhaps more so... a meditation on the way some people disappear, and time erases memory... so familiar as to be universal, and will probably ring bells with all but the sunniest reader (***** Five Stars)

A deeply felt, forensic yet ultimately empathetic examination of human motivation and its attendant sorrows, which is as much a social history of the early 20th century as it is the story of one family and its secrets… [Cumming's] intermeshing of art, time and memory is superlative… The repercussions are interrogated by Cumming with a hungry precision up to her last, revelatory pages

On Chapel Sands is a mystery solved through empathy and interpretation. It feels as if this is the book Cumming has been working towards, a deeply personal story but one that also draws on practised skills as a critic and a writer. It is perfectly balanced between the requirements of its narrative and the expression of its author's passions. It is a moving tribute from a daughter to her parents and grandparents. It is beautifully written

Unputdownable… this memoir-cum-detective story becomes a remarkable search for truth

A fascinating, beautifully written feat of detective work, evoking bygone Britain during an era when so much was left unsaid

A poetic blend of memoir and detective story… Cumming breathes new life into the form, with her art critic’s analysis of the family photographs which appear on many of the pages

On Chapel Sands is a fascinating read, as painstaking as an archaeological dig. Laura carefully sifts through years of fact, speculation and omission until the truth comes to light

Wonderful, haunting... a poetic study in half-lights and fragments... a moving meditation... It is intimate and yet, at a slant, draws in a larger web of moments beyond the limits of the frame

This is a clear-eyed and careful portrait of a family unravelling that stands out for the way in which it considers what isn’t being shown as much as what is

Gripped from the sure-footed imagery of the opening sentence… the fragmentary style of the book gives way to a more lyrical tone… The lyricism of her relationship with images…is this book’s greatest gift

This utterly enthralling family memoir draws you into a mystery from the childhood of the author's mother... spellbinding... [Cumming] has also woven in photographs and artworks, which beautifully illuminate and complement the narrative

An outstanding investigation into a family’s secrets and a revelation of how art enriches life

There can be no more gripping read than Observer art critic Laura Cumming's On Chapel Sands... Nothing is as it seems right up to the last page of this modern masterpiece

Its pleasures are slow, cumulative and utterly absorbing, it would be the perfect choice for a holiday with long stretches of reading time… A wonderful meditation on the half-truths and half-lights that make up our understanding of a life

An absolute masterpiece. A book bursting with love – love lost and love found, love misunderstood, unsaid and denied. I was spellbound by Laura Cumming’s warm, intelligent, searching voice and her intense scrutiny of images to reveal the unexpected and make us think again. I am in complete awe. A beguilingly lovely book – as big as the sea

An absolutely utterly transfixing narrative which I could hardly bear to leave in order to go to sleep at night and which I could  not wait to wake up to in the morning, writing of such  sublime beauty that I delighted in page after page, and above all a story of such emotional power, not only about Laura’s mother, but also about Laura herself, that sometimes I found myself  putting my copy down  just to take a moment to breathe

Juliet Nicolson, author of A House Full of Daughters

An intricately structured and perfectly written swirl of memoir, history and art: the prose equivalent of beautifully marbled paper. I adored it

A true masterpiece: an unveiling of family secrets written in prose of the utmost beauty, and an astonishing act of filial love. Read it!

Exquisitely written, compelling and painful

[An] intriguing and beautiful book… Cumming summons a novelist’s skill, making it impossible to stop reading the unravelling story. Every chapter ends with a new discovery, or the potential for one, and right up to the very last page the serpentine revelations twist like an anaconda

Haunting, luminous and revelatory… one of the best memoirs in recent years

[A] compelling, beautifully written book… Chapter by chapter, Cumming slowly pieces together an authentic portrait of her ancestors, a paean dedicated lovingly to her mother

Extraordinary… It is a scrupulously, luminously empathic book, and the work of a masterful storyteller

A remarkable new book, which blends mystery, memoir, art criticism and Lincolnshire history… The story may be unique but the themes are universal

A profound and beautiful book… Cumming illuminate the darkness of secrets, shame and betrayal and their effects in a riveting book

The story, beautifully written, is enriched by Cumming’s skill at making pictures speak

On Chapel Sands is as compelling as any detective novel of the golden age. The rigour and pace of the writing, its themes of mistaken identity, confinement and sexual deceit are reminiscent of Josephine Tey

Laura Cumming writes very beautifully and I take real pleasure in the prose

On Chapel Sands is beautifully written, immersive and moving – and it’s one of the finest books of the year

A haunting investigation into family trauma and secrets from a forgotten England that turns out to lie closer to the surface than anyone suspected. Turning detective, she [Laura Cumming] interrogates old snapshots with the forensic skill of a professional art critic

On Chapel Sands starts by seeming to be about one kind of mystery but soon starts being about another, much more profound one… the subtlety and suspense of the narrative lies in the way Cumming allows details about their relationship to emerge slowly, like a photograph socking in developing fluid

With her critic’s eye, Cumming turns detective to investigate who took her mother and tell a pacy story about relationships, pride and the ramifications of what goes unsaid

In a year strong in ingenious memoir, Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands…stood out, not just for its great storytelling but for Cumming’s wonderful ability to bring to life a Lincolnshire coastal community…its moods, characters and toxic secret-harbouring machinery

This beautifully written memoir of family mystery proved one of the surprise hits of 2019

[A] twisting literary mystery that also serves as a deeply moving love letter

A complex story of family secrets, beautifully written, and illustrated

A beautiful, multi-layered story full of lost love, human motivation and tender secrets

[A] bewitching blend of history and mystery

A scrupulous work of storytelling, radiant with empathy and filial affection

Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her book, The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez, was Book of the Week on Radio 4, Wall Street Journal Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller. It won the 2017 James Tait Black Biography Prize and was published to critical acclaim (‘A riveting detective story: readers will be spellbound’ Colm Tóibín). Her first book, A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits, was described by Nick Hornby as ‘Brilliant, fizzing with ideas not just about art but human nature’ and by Julian Barnes as ‘that rare item: an art book where the text is so enthralling that the pictures almost seem like an interruption’.

In Pursuit of Velazquez

The Vanishing Man

The captivating and mysterious tale of a Victorian bookseller whose fate was changed forever by the great painter Velazquez

The Vanishing Man is a riveting detective story and a brilliant reconstruction of an art controversy, but it is also a homage to the art of Velázquez, written by a critic who remains spellbound by his genius, as readers will be spellbound by this book

Sumptuous...A gleaming work of someone at the peak of her craft

An extraordinary story ... This terrific book is many things, a study in obsession, a paean of praise to an artist of genius, a detective story and, for the author, an exorcism of grief. Writing like Helen Macdonald in H is for Hawk, in the wake of the death of her father, Cumming pours heart and soul in The Vanishing Man and she has produced something of which her artist father, James Cumming, would be more than proud

Laura Cumming twists several genres around her supple fingers in order to tell the extraordinary story of how Snare fell under the spell of a painting and sacrificed everything - prosperity, reputation, a respectable death surrounded by loving family - so that he might live with it like a love ... The detective story [...] gusts the plot along at a cracking pace... You put down The Vanishing Man not quite sure how Cumming has been able to bring off this particular magic trick, but happy and grateful that she has.

In this superb and original book, Cumming interweaves the gripping story of Snare with that of Diego Velázquez himself, painting at the court in Madrid in the 17th century.. Like Donna Tartt's novel The Goldfinch, this is about the particular forms of obsession that only art can generate... This enthralling book is about what it means to create art so luminous that others would fight just to get close to it

This is an absorbing dual biography inspired by the author's passion for Velázquez... Cumming brings her subject alive and writes with empathy and insight

A real-life detective story involving an Old Master portrait of an ill-fated English king and an art obsession that would lead to the ruin of one of the book's two mysterious protagonists: one a humble 19th-century printer and bookseller from Reading, John Snare; the other the great 17th-century Spanish court painter named in the title ... Interwoven into the narrative of Snare's tribulations, and of beautifully compelling accounts of Velázquez's paintings, are moving snippets of biography that reveal Cumming's own relationship to the great Spanish master

Simultaneously art historian and detective, Cumming skilfully weaves together the lives not only of Velázquez and Snare, but also of the ill-fated king and of the man who unknowingly sparked her interest in the Spanish artist — her late father, the painter James Cumming.

Ingenious... intriguing... [Cumming] subtly interweaves the two narratives - that of Snare and that of Velázquez - so that they illuminate each other in surprising ways.

The painter, writes Cumming, allowed every sitter 'his privacy, his secrecy, his full mystery' even when revealing them for all to see and in this accomplished and touching book she allows her two subjects theirs

The compelling tale of enigmatic Spanish painter Velazquez – and the obsessive fan who bought himself a lifetime of misery…

The book is so carefully made that each part seems to reflect and light up the rest ... This is a cultural whodunnit, and the skill is in making the pursuit as engaging as the dénouement

[Cumming] subtly interweaves the two narratives – that of Snare and that of Velazquez – so that they illuminate each other in surprising ways… intriguing.

Cumming is the sensitive and perceptive art critic of The Observer and author of a fine study of self portraits, A Face to the World (2010), and when she writes of the paintings, her words take wing

A magnificent piece of historical research... But it is also an eloquent defence of pure connoisseurship against dry contextual academicism – and a blazing display of passionate looking.

As compelling and entertaining as a detective novel, this is an engaging book, comparable to C. Lewis Hind’s “Days with Velázquez” from 1906.

Laura Cumming twists several genres around her supple fingers in order to tell [this] extraordinary story… The detective story…gusts the plot along at a cracking pace.

Cumming deftly moves back and forth between the sad story of Snare…and her own enthusiastic and vivid account of many of [Velazquez’s] greatest works… A skilfully plotted detective story – complete with meticulous detail, forensic analysis and unexpected twists in the plot… [Cumming] brings out the mesmerising virtuosity of Velazquez’s brush.

Deftly intertwines the tale of one of art history’s most mysterious and magical painters with the true story of…an obscure 19th-century bookseller’s obsession.

A book full of interest and passion… [Cumming] has succeeded in bringing Velazquez’s paintings to life by her vivid evocation of them.

Absorbing tale… Cumming has woven a detective mystery, a social micro-history and a loving account of perhaps Spain’s greatest painter… A highly enjoyable art-historical detective story.

A paean to the emotional effects of great art… This giddying account brings the Spanish master to life.

I read this at one go: a gripping triple narrative…evoked with the lightest touch but real seriousness of purpose.

A vivid biography… The glow from this marvelous book lingers months after I finished it.

A moving memorial… A cracking good story to boot

[Written] in shimmering prose fuelled by an intriguing mystery… Cumming explores the nature of artistic obsession and desire.

[A] touching and thrilling quest for a lost Velazquez.

A gripping tale with as many twists and turns as a detective story… Immaculately researched and told.

A riveting, multilayered page-turner, it is highly recommended, especially if you share Cumming’s art obsession.

Laura Cumming has been art critic of the Observer since 1999. Previously, she was a presenter of Nightwaves on Radio 3, arts producer for the BBC World Service and arts editor of the New Statesman. Her previous book, A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits, and the accompanying BBC Four documentary, received widespread critical acclaim.

WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 
 
Selected as a Book of the Year in the Herald 
 
In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velázquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile. 
 
Fusing detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velázquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before.

Laura Cumming

A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty

This is an extraordinary book, full of beauty and feeling and immediacy and depth (and impressive detective work)...Thunderclap is a work of genius

One of the most captivating books I have ever read… Delightful, intimate, and dotted with beautiful art. A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art

Cumming is a word-painter ... When something fascinates Laura Cumming, she makes sure, with her beguiling prose, that we too are caught up in her fascination

Cumming clearly loves these paintings, and by weaving together vivid evocations of ones that particularly move her with brief biographies of the men and women who painted them, she invites us to share that love

Exquisite... [Cumming's] pages are themselves lovely exercises in poetic vision and stay with you long after you finish

[A] lustrous meditation on the lives and after-lives of artists ... with a novelist's pace, a critic's eye, a daughter's heart

A superb tribute to the masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age, and the father who taught her how to see them ... In asking why we return to paintings across decades and centuries, this book taught me to see anew

[A] fascinating amalgam of insightful art appreciation and a haunting personal story

An intriguing, ambitious and tender blend of art history and personal memoir, this beautifully illustrated book is one to read and re-read

No one writes art like Laura Cumming . . . There's a passionate energy in this book, a dexterity of description and narrative and a sensitivity to the subtleties of painting and personal memory that leaves you utterly breathless and transfixed. You are never going to read a better book about the experience of art - and of love

Philip Hoare, author of Albert & the Whale

Cumming unwraps the truth of Fabritius, Vermeer and other artists in the catastrophically shattered town of Delft with glowing intelligence, in prose that shines and beams and recreates life almost to the point of photosynthesis

Candia McWilliam, author of What to Look For in Winter

A masterpiece ... So moving and profound in its compassion for our short, vivid lives. I will never look at any painting in the same way again

Polly Morland, author of A Fortunate Woman

With Thunderclap, Laura Cumming does for Dutch Golden Age painting and the curious life of an art critic what H Is for Hawk did for T H White and falconry. This deeply personal analysis of what it is to gaze and wonder, to read stories in centuries-old oil paint, will send you hurrying back to your nearest gallery

Cumming writes with the sureness of carefully laid paint... she brings him [Fabritius] out of the shadows, making us see why he is so much more than the missing link in someone else's story

Pretty much anything is a focal point for Cumming's eye. She writes in such granular detail about these paintings...that she can leave you feeling you've never properly studied anything in your life

[An] excellent book about art, life and death

The author blends elements seamlessly ... Cumming's prose is luminous

'Thunderclap combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir... and does what Fabritius's sibylline scenes do: it does not redescribe so much as reimagine'

Compelling ... Cumming writes about art with a painter's precision and celebrates the power of pictures to bring us closer, not just to other people but to other worlds

Our guide is like no other. We are taken across a portal into another world, both intimate and oceanic. How the light pours in. Here is a book to enrichen our lives. Delicate, exact, visionary, personal. And here's the thing: the searing love behind every perfect word

Beautiful . . . It held me completely in its thrall. These voices and visions from the seventeenth century, so effortlessly woven through the author's memories of a Scottish childhood in the twentieth, will speak to many readers navigating timeless issues of love and identity, inheritance and mortality today. Thunderclap is an intimate and compelling investigation of the art of memory, and what survives of us

Nancy Campbell, author of Fifty Words for Snow

'With her humane and luminous stories of Dutch art and artists, and of her painter father, Laura Cumming shows that life comes at you fast. There may not be time to rage against the dying of the light - we should use the light now. Use it to look and to connect'

Hugh Aldersley-Williams, author of Dutch Light

As deftly told as any thriller, culminating in a lightning strike of a final paragraph which makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck each time I read it ... An astonishingly rich book

A remarkable experiment in form as well as a richly satisfying extended meditation on art, life and death

Cumming's descriptions of what is in front of her eyes are often incandescently beautiful, and well informed. She has a special ability to transport her readers, presenting historical facts and scientific developments as the marvels they are. Her curiosity is infectious-you don't have to love Dutch art to love this book, though you may well come away with a renewed sense of its value. We can luxuriate in visiting the Dutch Golden Age with such a humane and knowledgeable guide

Cumming's prose is luminous... Thunderclap is a love letter to Fabritius, whom history has neglected

Cumming skilfully blends art criticism with history, biography and moving personal recollections of her artist father

Fabritius...[is] best known for painting The Goldfinch, made famous by Donna Tartt's wonderful novel of that name, but Thunderclap is so much more, reminiscent of The Hard with Amber Eyes and H Is for Hawk

The author and Observer critic Laura Cumming is a lovely writer about art and about her own family. Both are present in Thunderclap, a beguiling sort-of memoir

Wondrous .... Its thunderclap still echoes in my ears

A beautifully written, exquisitely structured, achingly moving study of the painter Fabritius. But it is also much more: a threnody for her father, a love letter to Dutch civilisation, a meditation on what we can truly know of times past

Fabulous . . . Sent me straight back to Dutch painters of the 17th with newly opened eyes . . . Highly recommended.

Combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir ... Provides a shimmering new place where we can live and look

A poetic yet clear-eyed investigation of art, family and loss

This marvellous book shows us how looking carefully at a painting can change your perspective in a thunderclap

An inviting, hugely readable book....and one of our picks of the year

A terrific read about art, life and death

A memoir of art and life & sudden death

**WINNER OF THE SALTIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024** 
**WINNER OF THE WRITERS' PRIZE 2024 | NON-FICTION** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024** 
 
 
A beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean. 
 
‘Brilliant’ Edmund de Waal * ‘Captivating’ Nina Stibbe * 'Extraordinary' India Knight 
 
On the morning of 12 October 1654, a gunpowder explosion devastated the Dutch city of Delft. Among the fatalities was the painter Carel Fabritius, dead at thirty-two, leaving behind his haunting masterpiece The Goldfinch. 
 
Thunderclap explores what happened to Fabritius before and after the disaster whilst interweaving the lives of Laura Cumming, her painter father and the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age. It takes the reader from seventeenth-century Delft to twentieth-century Scottish islands, from Rembrandt’s studio to wartime America and contemporary London. This is a book about what a picture may come to mean, how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap. 
 
‘Superb…this book taught me to see anew’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty’ Sunday Times

Laura Cumming

Praise for Thunderclap

A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty

This is an extraordinary book, full of beauty and feeling and immediacy and depth (and impressive detective work)...Thunderclap is a work of genius

One of the most captivating books I have ever read… Delightful, intimate, and dotted with beautiful art. A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art

A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty

This is an extraordinary book, full of beauty and feeling and immediacy and depth (and impressive detective work)...Thunderclap is a work of genius

One of the most captivating books I have ever read… Delightful, intimate, and dotted with beautiful art. A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art

A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty

This is an extraordinary book, full of beauty and feeling and immediacy and depth (and impressive detective work)...Thunderclap is a work of genius

One of the most captivating books I have ever read… Delightful, intimate, and dotted with beautiful art. A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art

Books by Laura Cumming

Articles featuring Laura Cumming

10 Vintage Non-Fiction Recommendations

Extraordinary stories from ordinary people

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