Julia Blackburn Knihy

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999.

Julia Blackburn, an acclaimed non-fiction writer, elevates her craft in her exploration of the final years of the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. Inspired by the loss of her mother, also a painter, Blackburn's fascination with Goya began after learning about his permanent deafness at 47. She sought to understand the world of this isolated artist and how his condition influenced his remaining senses. The narrative offers a perceptive journey into Goya's mind, blending history and fiction as Blackburn reflects on her mother's death, visits to Goya's former locales in Spain and France, and the painter's vibrant life amid personal and societal turmoil in early 19th-century Spain. The work traces Goya's evolution from a prosperous court painter to grappling with deafness, the devastation of the Peninsula War, the loss of his first wife, and a later relationship with a much younger mistress. Accompanying the text are 23 exquisite Goya copperplates, through which Blackburn perceives Goya as a silent observer, capturing the absurd, cruel, and carnivalesque aspects of life. Her elegant prose and keen eye for detail create a compassionate portrait of Goya, drawing readers into the dynamic energy of his life journey.

In these five stories Julia Blackburn recalls the significant animals in her life and in so doing gives us a sidelong glance at the human members of her family, her painter mother and poet father. First comes Congo the bush baby, from the jungles of Madagascar via Harrods pet department. He slept in an old cap on the back of the door, and could leap about the room via the picture rails. Then there are tropical fish, tortoises, chickens, guinea pigs, foxes (the last three a combustible combination), pigs, and two very distinctive dogs, Julia's own dog, Jason, a cocker spaniel whose habits of servility and loyalty Julia's father, Thomas, was determined to undo ('He's worse than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, fawning at my heels!') and Henry, a Parson Jack Russell terrier that Thomas got after his divorce, a dog of great independence, dignity and forbearance, whom his master used to take mountaineering.This is a delightful book, wry, funny and wise, and unmistakably the work of Julia Blackburn.

In 1913, at the age of 54, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. Brilliantly reviewed, astonishingly original, this "eloquent and illuminating portrait of an extraordinary woman" (New York Times Book Review) tells a fascinating, true story in the tradition of Isak Dinesen and Barry Lopez.

Shortly after her husband’s death, Julia Blackburn became fascinated with Doggerland, the vast once-populated stretch of land that connected Great Britain to Continental Europe thousands of years ago but is now under the North Sea. She felt driven to explore the lives of the people who lived there as revealed through artifacts and the fossil record. In Time Song, she brings us along on her journey, introducing us to the paleontologists, archaeologists, fishermen, and fellow Doggerland enthusiasts she meets along the way. What emerges is a lyrical exploration—part travelogue and part history—and a profound meditation on time and the immensity of the past.

The narrative explores Julia Blackburn's journey to the Karoo region of South Africa, where she investigates the ancestral lands of the persecuted /Xam people. In the 19th century, facing cultural extinction, they contributed to the Bleek-Lloyd Archive, a collection of 60,000 pages capturing their language, dreams, and traumas. This archive serves as a vital record of their worldview, emphasizing their belief that "all things were once people," offering a profound insight into a nearly lost way of life.

'Wandering through dreams and nightmares from Praslin Islands to Mauritius and finally to England, the author unfolds the troubled lives of her forbears, cursed by racial prejudice, sexual inhibition and recurrent mental illness.

To escape from her own sadness, a woman finds refuge in a past time. In a village by the sea she watches the lives of the inhabitants unfold around her. But the year is now 1410 and this is a world of devils and miracles, a world in which there are no clear boundaries between reality and the power of the imagination.A man's discovery of a mermaid washed up on the sand starts a chain of events that leads three of the villagers to accompany the enigmatic figure of the leper on a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land. The woman joins them and sets out without the certainty of ever coming home again.The Leper's Companions was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

Ein aufrüttelndes Porträt von Billie Holiday, der bedeutendsten Jazzsängerin des 20. Jahrhunderts, basierend auf 150 neu entdeckten Tonbandinterviews. Ihr Leben war ebenso leidenschaftlich und zügellos wie ihre Musik.

Negli ultimi sei anni della sua vita, Napoleone Bonaparte, un tempo sovrano di un impero mondiale, risiedette in un fatiscente podere a Sant'Elena, un'isola inaccessibile e tempestosa all'estremità del mondo. Inseguito dai ricordi del suo potere, il suo regno è ora limitato a una natura che sta subendo drammatici cambiamenti. Tuttavia, anche in questo contesto, i suoi custodi e il misero resto di una corte non possono sfuggire all'aura del sovrano esiliato. Julia Blackburn racconta la storia affascinante dell'isola di Sant'Elena e del suo abitante più leggendario.

Lange tijd was reizen een gevaarlijke bezigheid, eigenlijk voorbehouden aan mannen. Niettemin waren er ook vroeger al vrouwen die zich waagden aan riskante tochten door Afrika en Azië, of die van wereldstad naar wereldstad trokken om zich te mengen onder de rich and famous. Gevoelig voor het verrassende detail geven deze pioniersters hun kijk op barre woestijnen, uitheemse steden en vreemde gebruiken.

De Engelse schrijfster Julia Blackburn (1948- ) schetst het leven en het huwelijk van haar vader, de dichter Thomas Blackburn en haar moeder, de schilderes Rosalie de Meric.