Paul Johnson
Gombrich For Ever
Sight and Insight: Essays on Art and Culture in Honour of E H Gombrich at 85
By John Onians
Phaidon 420pp £29.99 order from our bookshop
Most festschrifts are works of piety rather than serious scholarship. This is different. It would be hard to exaggerate the knowledge I have gained or the pleasure and stimulation I have received from studying this book. That is as it should be. Sir Ernst Gombrich, now eighty-five, is the greatest art scholar of his generation, who can fairly be said to have transformed the methods whereby the fine arts are studied in this country. It is right that his festschrift should be magnificent, original, dense, varied and closely focused on his particular interests.
The essence of a great teacher of aesthetics is that he shows you how to look at works of art in new, systematic and informed ways. In these respects there has been no one like Gombrich, except perhaps the late Kenneth Clark. Serious art, as I define it, must combine
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
For two decades the Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote an anonymous column for a literary journal, inviting writers to send in their writing for her to critique.
Joanna Kavenna peruses her feedback.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/have-you-considered-accountancy
Mazower turns 'the Greek Revolution from a simplistic, two-dimensional story into a vast colourful fresco populated by a cast of characters that is astonishing in its diversity.'
Stathis N Kalyvas on a new book about the Greek Revolution of 1821.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freedom-or-death
'The subtitle of this biography, "Never a Dull Moment", refers to the momentous events of George V’s reign, but the book’s real surprise is that its author, having laboured through the king’s deadly diaries, does not find him dull.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/colonel-blimp-enthroned