The most important thing about this book is the label on the back which reads: ‘Price £7.50’. Admittedly it is a sticky label and that, I fear, means that next time I look it may be £8.50 – and eventually more. But in any case it is a splendid example of the phenomenon of ‘paper-backs to the rescue’ for art-historians.

All who read complain of the price of books today, but I believe that those who work in other subjects do not realize how hard this problem has hit the art-historian. As examples – keeping to the field covered by Wittkower’s book – one may quote Richard Spear’s new book