Search results for ""Author Adrian Searle""

She was the daughter of an alcoholic Isle of Wight smuggler. Much of her childhood was spent in the island's workhouse. Yet Sophie Dawes threw off the shackles of her downbeat formative years to become one of the most talked-about personalities in post-revolutionary France. It was the ultimate rags to riches story which would see her become the mistress of the fabulously wealthy French aristocrat Louis Henri de Bourbon, destined to be the last Prince of Conde. Her total subjugation of the ageing prince, her obsessive desire for a position among the highest echelon of French royalist society following the Bourbon restoration, and her designs upon a hefty chunk of Louis Henri's vast fortune would lead to scandal, sensation and then infamy The Infamous Sophie Dawes takes an in-depth look at her island background before tracing her extraordinary rise from obscurity to becoming a baroness who ruled the prince's chateau at Chantilly as its unofficial queen and intrigued with the King of the French to get what she wanted. But how far did she go? The book examines the mysterious death of Louis Henri in 1830 and uses newly discovered evidence in a bid to determine the part Sophie may have played in his demise.

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Its been a State secret for more than seventy years. The official line in the UK has always been that it never happened but this new work challenges the assertion that no German force set foot on British soil during the Second World War (the Channel Islands excepted), on active military service. Churchills Last Wartime Secret reveals the remarkable story of a mid-war seaborne enemy raid on an Isle of Wight radar station. It describes the purpose and scope of the attack, the composition of the raiding German force and how it was immediately, and understandably, hushed-up by Winston Churchills wartime administration, in order to safeguard public morale. Circumventing the almost complete lack of official British archival documentation, the author relies on compelling and previously undisclosed first-hand evidence from Germany to underpin the books narrative and claims; thus distinguishing it from other tales of rumoured seaborne enemy assaults on British soil during the 1939-45 conflict. After examining the outcome and repercussions of this astonishing incident, what emerges is an event of major symbolic significance in the annals of wartime history.

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Dorothy O’Grady is uniquely placed in the annals of espionage. She was the first Briton condemned to death under the Treachery Act of 1940 after she was frequently spotted on the outskirts of Sandown (a prohibited area on the Isle of Wight), insisting time and again that her dog had strayed. Had her appeal not saved her from the gallows, she would have been the only woman of any nationality to suffer death under the Act during the Second World War – indeed, the only woman to be executed in Britain for spying in the 20th century. Yet the full story of her extraordinary brush with notoriety and its enduring legacy has never been told, despite the fact that it has more than once dominated the front pages of the British press and inspired both a BBC radio drama and a novel. Now, with the benefit of access to previously classified documents, the truth underpinning the O’Grady legend can finally be revealed. Following her appeal she served nine years in prison for her wartime crimes – but was she really a spy in the employ of Germany? Or was O'Grady, as she insisted years later, a self-seeking tease who committed her apparent treachery ‘for a giggle’? Or was there some other motivation which drove her to wartime infamy in a case which reverberated around the world? In The Spy Beside the Sea, author and journalist Adrian Searle examines all the evidence to reach a disturbing conclusion.

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“Far more than a history lesson, In Plain Sight is filled with strange encounters, unnerving juxtapositions, soulful laments. Daunting as well as uplifting, risky and theatrical.” –Adrian Searle, the Guardian This the first major book on the Nassau- and New York–based artist Tavares Strachan (born 1979) to be published since 2014. Focusing on his extraordinary exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery London in 2020, this hardcover book features a lenticular print on the cover and more than 120 full-color images. The book includes a new text by esteemed writer and art critic Adrian Searle. Strachan’s exhibition In Plain Sight combined painting, sculpture, installation, music and performance within an immersive, site-specific experience. Many elements of the exhibition were hidden, revealing new and inner worlds to the visitors who discovered them. The experience and the works on view prompted visitors to reconsider the Western canon, learn the value of forgotten histories and invite new voices to participate. This fully illustrated catalog presents a unique and lively documentation of this exceptional show.

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