Jan Morris
Though the Open Door
Everything Is Happening: Journey into a Painting
By Michael Jacobs
Granta Books 228pp £15.99
The art historian and travel writer Michael Jacobs died last year, leaving a literary legacy at once irresistibly idiosyncratic and unobtrusively learned. In particular he wrote uniquely about the nation, culture and history of Spain, where he lived for much of his life and to which he was devoted. It is only proper that his final work should concern a supreme icon of Spanishness, Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas.
Everyone knows this painting. It must be one of the most famous works of art, reproduced all over the world, assessed in every reference book and truly representative of the Spanish tradition. For generations, scholars have analysed its brilliant technique and wondered about its meanings; Las Meninas is the supreme enigma picture, a riddle and a mystery, and for Jacobs it offered a lifelong challenge to his own complicated intellect.
The result is this fascinatingly confused and confusing book, which he never finished. Only a third of
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
Alfred, Lord Tennyson is practically a byword for old-fashioned Victorian grandeur, rarely pictured without a cravat and a serious beard.
Seamus Perry tries to picture him as a younger man.
Seamus Perry - Before the Beard
Seamus Perry: Before the Beard - The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes
literaryreview.co.uk
Novelist Muriel Spark had a tongue that could produce both sugar and poison. It’s no surprise, then, that her letters make for a brilliant read.
@claire_harman considers some of the most entertaining.
Claire Harman - Fighting Words
Claire Harman: Fighting Words - The Letters of Muriel Spark, Volume 1: 1944-1963 by Dan Gunn
literaryreview.co.uk
Of all the articles I’ve published in recent years, this is *by far* my favourite.
✍️ On childhood, memory, and the sea - for @Lit_Review :
https://literaryreview.co.uk/flotsam-and-jetsam