Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing

Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia LaingIn this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty first century. Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, examining its role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean Michel Basquiat and Georgia O'Keefe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith,

and my vision for the future - the story of how we came to make this

A BBC Top 100 Novels that Shaped Our World

walk down a country path or go to the beach in Great Britain

and a unique treatise on magic

is over a mile away

but he has forged a style which is patently his own

while in London his friend Doug doesn't understand why his teenage daughter is eternally enraged

repeatedly

Life as seen through the eyes of Patrick Freyne is stranger

' New York Times Book Review

Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric's home and family

through that age-old English ability to laugh at ourselves' Observer