Camera Portraits: Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery, London, 1839-1989

A splendidly luxurious volume of 150 illustrations, representing 150 years of photography, this features pictures of notable persons from science, religion, politics, society and, especially, the arts. The generally excellent prints (mostly black-and-white) were taken by a plethora of photographers, ranging from 19th-century unknowns to modern-day superstars Helmut Newton, David Bailey, Richard Avedon et al. An eclectic history of Great Britain during the past century and a half, this wonderful collection offers the reader carefully rendered glimpses varying from starched poses of Lord Mountbatten or Horatio Herbert Kitchener to informal shots of Henry Moore or T. S. Eliot. Serving as subjects are such historical luminaries as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Disraeli, Florence Nightingale, Rupert Brooke, Edith Sitwell, Aubrey Beardsley, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, John Osborne, Queen Victoria, David Livingstone and a host of others. Short essays alongside the pictures offer bios of sitter and photographer. Rogers is a director of the London National Portrait Gallery. (Sept.)