Fiona MacCarthy
Fiona MacCarthy OBE (born 1940) is a British biographer and cultural historian best known for her studies of 19th and 20th century arts, crafts and design.
MacCarthy was brought up in London. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School and took a degree in English Literature at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She worked as a features writer and columnist on The Guardian before moving north to live in Sheffield. She married the designer David Mellor in 1966 and they had two children, Corin and Clare. David Mellor died in May 2009.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1997),[1] an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University.
She is President of the Twentieth Century Society and a Vice-President of the Victorian Society.
She was awarded the Bicentenary Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for services to art and design.
MacCarthy was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.[2]
Bibliography
- All Things Bright and Beautiful: British Design 1830 to today, 1972
- The Simple Life: C. R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds, 1981
- The Omega Workshops: Decorative Arts of Bloomsbury, 1984
- Eric Gill, 1989 ISBN 0-571-13754-7
- William Morris: a Life for our Time, 1994 (winner of Wolfson History Prize and Writers' Guild Non-fiction Award) ISBN 0-394-58531-3
- Stanley Spencer; an English Vision, 1997
- Byron: Life and Legend, 2002 ISBN 0-7195-5621-X
- Last Curtsey: the End of the Debutantes, 2007. ISBN 0-571-22859-3 This memoir draws on her own experiences as a debutante in 1958, final year of presentations to the Queen.
- The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination 2011
MacCarthy is well known for her arts essays and reviews, appearing regularly in The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books. She contributes frequently to TV and radio arts programmes.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions curated:
- Homespun to Highspeed: British Design 1860 to 1960 for Sheffield Museums and Art Galleries, 1979
- The Omega Workshops: Decorative Arts of Bloomsbury for the Crafts Council, 1984
- Eye for Industry: retrospective of the Royal Designers for the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986
- Byron for the National Portrait Gallery, 2002
- William Morris and his Legacy, currently in preparation for the National Portrait Gallery
References
- 'Fiona MacCarthy: The Last Debutante' by Matthew J Reisz, The Independent, 6 October 2006
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1940 |
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