Search results for ""author charlie english""

‘A riveting tale, brilliantly told' Philippe Sands The little-known story of Hitler’s war on modern art and the mentally ill. In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works by schizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world. The Prinzhorn collection, as it was called, inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. What the doctor could not have known, however, was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder. Soon after his rise to power, Hitler—a failed artist of the old school—declared war on modern art. The Nazis staged giant ‘Degenerate Art’ shows to ridicule the avant-garde, and seized and destroyed the cream of Germany's modern art collections. This action was mere preparation, however, for the even more sinister campaign Hitler would later wage against so-called "degenerate" people, and Prinzhorn's artists were caught up in both. Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical "artist-Führer", this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler's first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust.

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‘A riveting tale, brilliantly told' Philippe Sands The little-known story of Hitler’s war on modern art and the mentally ill. In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works by schizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world. The Prinzhorn collection, as it was called, inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. What the doctor could not have known, however, was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder. Soon after his rise to power, Hitler—a failed artist of the old school—declared war on modern art. The Nazis staged giant ‘Degenerate Art’ shows to ridicule the avant-garde, and seized and destroyed the cream of Germany's modern art collections. This action was mere preparation, however, for the even more sinister campaign Hitler would later wage against so-called "degenerate" people, and Prinzhorn's artists were caught up in both. Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical "artist-Führer", this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler's first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust.

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In this unique book, part eulogy, part history, part travelogue, Charlie English goes in search of the best snow on the planet. Along the way he explains the extraordinary hold this commonplace phenomenon has over us, and reveals the ongoing drama of our relationship with it. Combining on-the-slopes experience with off-piste research, Charlie English's journey begins with the magical moment when his two-year-old son sees snow for the first time, before setting off in the footsteps of the Romantic poets over the Alps, following the sled-tracks of the Inuit across Greenland, and meeting up with a flurry of fellow enthusiasts, from snow-making scientists in Japan and global warming experts in California to plough drivers in Alaska.This is a book for anyone who reaches for their mittens at the sight of the first flake.

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