This is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists

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In This is Tomorrow Michael Bird takes a fresh look at the 'long twentieth century', from the closing years of Queen Victoria's reign to the turn of the millennium, through the lens of the artists who lived and worked in this ever-changing Britain. As one of history’s most prolific moviemakers, his style and comic sensibility have been imitated, but never replicated, by countless other filmmakers over the years. Bird illuminates how British artists have been remembered, reimagined, and reshaped by a century of dramatic events.

In war and peace, Churchill came to enjoy painting as his primary means of relaxation from the strain of public affairs. It's a brilliant book, by far the best survey of a period that I've read in years' - Andrew Lambirth, The Spectator 'A timely update of the story of British art, packed with contextual material and photographs . A compelling and lively history that examines the lives of British artists from the late nineteenth century to today. In This is Tomorrow Michael Bird takes a fresh look at the ‘long twentieth century’, from the closing years of Queen Victoria’s reign to the turn of the millennium, through the lens of the artists who lived and worked in this ever-changing Britain. Valuable, too, are letters from the earlier and less documented part of Eliot’s life, which have been supplemented by additional correspondence from family members in America.His subjects included his family homes at Blenheim and Chartwell, evocative coastal scenes on the French Riviera, and many sun-drenched depictions of Marrakesh in Morocco, as well as still life pictures and an extraordinarily revealing self-portrait, painted during a particularly troubled time in his life. The second part of the book provides previously uncollected critical accounts of his work by some of Churchill’s contemporaries: Augustus John’s hitherto unpublished introduction to the Royal Academy exhibition of Churchill’s paintings in 1959, and essays and reviews by Churchill’s acquaintances Sir John Rothenstein, Professor Thomas Bodkin and the art critic Eric Newton. Generously illustrated, This is Tomorrow is an absorbing narrative of how history has changed―and continues to change―how artists see and are seen. From the American James McNeill Whistler’s defence of his new kind of modern art against the British art establishment in the latter half of the 19th century to the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s melting icebergs in London, he traverses the lives of the artists that have recorded, questioned and defined our times. This is a story that unrolls the narrative of a whole century, and Michael conjures up in words all the pictures you’ll need.

These are the ebbs and flows that Michael Bird teases out in this panoramic account of Britain and its artists in across the twentieth century. Among new letters to have come to light, a good many date from the years 1898-1922, which has necessitated a revised edition of Volume One, taking account of approximately two hundred newly discovered items of correspondence.His books include Artists’ Letters: Leonardo da Vinci to David Hockney, Studio Voices: Art and Life in 20th-century Britain and 100 Ideas that Changed Art. His powers of persuasion clearly exceeded those of Colonel Baker, who seemed the personification of Victorian solidity until that embarrassing incident in the sealed railway compartment, where he failed to entice Miss Dickinson to join in his bit of fun, and afterwards had to try and explain his conduct to the High Court, with the whole nation hanging on his every word. The book is lavishly illustrated with reproductions of many of Churchill’s paintings, some of them appearing for the first time. Mr Bird gives voice to artists previously sidelined in such historical overviews: Sir Frank Bowling, Lubaina Himid, Mary Kelly, John Latham, Phyllida Barlow. Bird examines how the rhythms of change and adaptation in art became embedded in the collective consciousness of the nation and vividly evokes the personalities who populate and drive this story, looking beyond individual careers and historical moments to weave together interconnecting currents of change that flowed through London, Glasgow, Leeds, Cornwall, the Caribbean, New York, Moscow and Berlin.