When Philip Callow’s Common People was first published in 1958, reviewer John Betjeman described it as “a genuine cry from a class usually silent in the literary world” and hailed it as one of the best books of the year. The story of a young working-class man from the Midlands who dreams of escaping to an exciting life in London but is torn between his desire for an artistic career and his need to be married and “know common joys”, Callow’s novel was widely praised for its originality and ...

Philip Callow's new biography of Russia's greatest dramatist and storyteller is a major achievement. By examining Chekhov's life within the context of the evolution of his art, Mr. Callow makes the reader acutely aware of the hidden ground from which Chekhov's work sprang and on which his divided life stood. Arthur Miller calls Chekhov “in nearly every way our contemporary.” His irony is as modern as Beckett's; as a letter writer he is as natural and irresistible as D. H. Lawrence. In his ...

This first life of Cezanne in more than a quarter-century offers a vital reassessment of the invisible genius at the very inception of modern art. Fresh, boldly psychological, and energetically descriptive...an insightful portrait. -Booklist

Published on the hundredth anniversary of Van Gogh's death, this is the first full-length biography of this undying man in twenty years and surely the most comprehensive account to date. Mr. Callow treats more searchingly than any previous work the development of Van Gogh's genius and his emergence as an artist after early struggles to find a vocation, first in the world of art dealing and later as an evangelical missionary among Belgian miners. Using the skills and psychological insights ...