The best books to enjoy this August

Contemporary art, natural beauty and Tudor history are all on our list this month

Phyllida Barlow: Collected Lectures, Writings and Interviews

Edited by Sara Harrison (Hauser & Wirth Publishers, £32)

Phyllida Barlow has garnered global acclaim for her momentous sculptures, albeit later in her career. Before she was representing the country at the Venice Biennale, or transforming Tate Britain with enormous installations, she was an educator and a writer, as well as an artist. This new book brings together over 50 of her texts, offering up a range of prose, interviews, conversations with fellow creative minds, and more. 

Mark Catesby, Blue jay and laurel greenbrier. Watercolour and bodycolour heightened with gum (RCIN 924828). Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021

Illuminating Natural History: The Art and Science of Mark Catesby 

By Henrietta McBurney (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press, £40)

This celebration of the life and work of Mark Catesby, an 18^th-century artist, explorer and naturalist, is packed full of stunning watercolours that bring the natural world to life. During his travels across the United States and the Bahamas, he meticulously recorded now extinct birds such as the ivory-billed woodpecker and the rainbow-coloured Carolina parakeet, as well as tracking migration patterns. Most of his collection is housed at Windsor Castle, yet this volume presents many rarely published works.

The Calling of Clemo Trelawney

By Christopher Herbert (Gatekeeper Press, £9.99)

This novel from Christopher Herbert, a former Arts Society Lecturer and current President of both The Arts Society Farnham and The Arts Society Harpenden, follows the life of a boy growing up in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign. Enduring family tragedies and secrets, he makes his way through Tudor London, and grapples with his decision to become a monk, just as the king’s decision to suppress English monasteries takes hold.