Jane Ridley
Rex Whistler Painted Her Hall
A Constant Heart: The War Diaries of Maud Russell 1938–1945
By Emily Russell (ed)
The Dovecote Press 320pp £20
I don’t usually read books that I am sent to review in bed. But this one is the ideal bedtime book: slow-burning as diaries are, but richly absorbing, with the advantage that it doesn’t matter if one falls asleep after only ten minutes, as it can be picked up the next day.
Maud Russell was the daughter of a wealthy German Jewish stockbroker named Paul Nelke who came from Berlin to live in Britain in the 1880s. Born in London, Maud was brought up as an Englishwoman. She married Gilbert Russell, a banker sixteen years older than her, and they lived at a gem-like country house, Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire. Maud usually wrote her diary on a Sunday morning, sitting in bed with cream or a beauty mask on her face.
When the diaries begin in 1938, Maud is forty-seven and Rex Whistler is working on a set of murals for the hall at Mottisfont. She finds Rex maddeningly unreliable but brilliant, and marvels as the ideas ‘drip’ from the pencil that he clutches, strangely, between his second and third fingers.
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
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk