Charles Saumarez Smith paints a fascinating portrait of a man whose architecture was shaped by his personality. The book also explores Vanbrugh’s activities as a playwright and theatre manager, his circle of friends, his place in 18th-century society, and, in a final section, his influence on later architects from Robert Adam to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Through reproductions of period images from definitive official publications, commercial guides, souvenirs, music scores, poems and satirical periodicals, the book brings to life the 19th-century visitor’s experience of the first World’s Fair. It documents Prince Albert’s vision for the Exhibition alongside the planned and actual routes as recorded in official engravings, maps and guidebooks; the opening and closing ceremonies as depicted in prints; the official visual record of the Exhibition; and souvenirs, popular press and ephemera. It concludes by examining the legacy of the Great Exhibition, including the founding of an institution which shared the Exhibition’s mission to educate the public about art, design and taste: the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Featuring 26 of the most attractive and interesting historic town centres, this book analyses key routes and the urban or visual incidents along them and explains why they might provoke different sensations of joy, interest or containment for the inhabitant or passer-by.

Each of the town studies includes two historical maps – one created by John Speed in the C16th, which explains the general overall layout of a town, its shape, size, defensive walls, and river crossings, and the other a first edition OS map from the late C19th, which reveals the extent that medieval arrangements have survived, or not. Key routes within selected towns are then selected and illustrated as a way to explaining the topography and layout of these towns and how one still experiences them. In particular, there is the recurring theme about how the town might naturally draw you through to its centre, the subtlety of character and placing of key buildings as markers, each of which is uniquely different for each town. The drawings which illustrated the town studies are not only beautiful, but can be discriminate in aspects emphasised.

While, individually, the case studies are insightful and full of fascinating history and detail, as the book moves through these towns, themes, patterns and natural groupings of towns emerge. Thus, as a whole, the volume allows comparisons and explores similarities and contrasts which enrich the book’s findings and lessons.

The diversity of the waterways that Jackson has come to know through his travels is echoed in his images, which capture habitats rich in flora and fauna. We can also discern the changing face of our rivers – choked by pollution and straining to survive the abuses inflicted since industrialisation restricted the natural flow of the network of blue lines that trickle, meander and run through our lands. Celebrating those networks common to us all, this important publication reminds us of the splendours of our rivers – powerful and fragile in equal measure.

Interweaving his biography are the personalities who surrounded John, and the book looks at their influence on him, and his upon them. They include his fellow students at the Slade School of Art – his sister Gwen John and future wife Ida Nettleship, and his friends William Orpen, Ambrose McEvoy, Spencer Gore and Percy Wyndham Lewis – all of whom would become prominent artists in their own right.

This book is a long overdue, new interpretation of this singular figure, who was both at the heart of the British artistic milieu, and yet set apart from its movements and manifestos.

The book provides a chronological survey, each section opening with a brief historical overview which is followed by an authoritative and engaging account of the development of the period’s art and architecture. The leading architects, artists and stylistic currents are all discussed and outstanding individual buildings and works of art are analysed, some famous, others which may be unfamiliar to readers. While architecture is the principal starting point for the understanding of each period, paintings and sculpture are treated in some detail; archaeology, urban development, patronage and decorative arts are also covered.

The development of art and architecture in Sicily is not interpreted as a story of artistic conquests, but as one of acculturation and creative transformation. The author reveals that successive layering of different cultures, and the way each one interacted with its predecessors, produced art and architecture quite distinct from anywhere else in Europe. He thus challenges the commonly held view that Sicilian art and architecture is provincial and derivative, merely imitating the art of others.

The flourishing of international modernism in Cornwall was a unique episode in the story of modern art in Britain – perhaps anywhere in the world. No other small seaside town has been host to such a roll-call of major artists. Weaving in-depth research into a narrative of ‘startling anecdotal richness’, Michael Bird explores the many – often unexpected – connections between St Ives artists and broader currents in 20th-century British history. He sets the careers of international artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon in the context of a local environment that held powerful meanings for their work.

Bird examines the influence of the two world wars, the birth of the Welfare State and the Cold War, the space race of the 1960s – all of which found echoes in artists’ work – as well as the position of women artists in St Ives, the role of social class, and relations between artists and the community. The artists themselves emerge as vivid personalities. Do Alfred Wallis, Naum Gabo, Bernard Leach and Roger Hilton really have anything in common? The answers Michael Bird uncovers add up to a fascinating and highly readable account of the St Ives phenomenon.