As a teenager I enjoyed the magazine Books and Bookmen, in which the two standout reviewers were Auberon Waugh and Douglas Cooper. From his irascible reviews, it seemed that the latter found fault with everybody and everything while maintaining an omniscience on matters of modern art. Among the arresting remarks I recall was Cooper’s claim that there were only six good pictures in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. 

An Englishman who came into an Australian fortune on his twenty-first birthday in 1932, Cooper behaved exactly as he pleased. Attention-seeking and overtly confident in his views, he classed all those who disagreed with him as fools. After schooling at Repton, Cooper went to Trinity College, Cambridge, for a year, before spending time at universities in Paris and Marburg. An unsuccessful period at the Bar taught him the tools of advocacy, which he used to great effect for the rest of his life. Cooper was never good-looking; his face, quipped Cyril Connolly, ‘is evidently his fortune, but nobody else’s’. His appearance was not improved by a car accident that left him facially disfigured and blind in one eye, and the headaches he suffered for the rest of his life did nothing for his temper. 

In London, Cooper entered the gay circle of Roy de Maistre and befriended Francis Bacon, whose talent he spotted early. Cooper’s considerable wit meant that friendships started enthusiastically, although he invariably turned against people and friendship was no guarantee of kindness in print. Being savaged by Cooper in the