Rosemary Hill

Rosemary Hill’s most recent book is Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism. Her four-part series, The Lives of Stonehenge, can be found on the LRB Podcast. She is a contributing editor at the LRB. Having dismissed Constable, she is still pondering the subject of her next book.

Letter

Draw what you see

30 March 2017

I am interested to know from Anthony Paul that Gerald Scarfe intended his drawing of the ageing Churchill to convey pathos rather than hostility (Letters, 20 April). Much as I admire Scarfe I don’t think he realised his intention in this case. The original, which is charcoal on four sheets of paper, did hang in Portcullis House, but is there no longer. On 5 April it appeared as lot 134 in Sotheby’s...
Letter

Late Call

2 November 1995

It was never my intention to imply, nor does Sally Festing suggest in her book, that Barbara Hepworth committed suicide. In contrasting her posthumous reputation with that of Wood – who did kill himself – I wrote a sentence that lent itself to this construction. It was careless and I apologise. Of Festing’s accuracy it is difficult in many instances to judge, without, as Alan Bowness points out...
Letter

Humble Pie

17 December 1992

Having taken the authors of London: World City to task for getting a date wrong it was particularly unfortunate that I promptly did the same myself (LRB, 17 December 1992). The Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire in 1834 not 1835 – apologies and humble pie all round.

Leave me my illusions: Antiquarianism

Nicholas Penny, 29 July 2021

Moonlight on broken stone tracery is a common motif; dark interiors provide a foil for stained glass and for white satin and deep blue velvet. The men must be away on the crusades. Young women are sobbing...

Read more reviews

Very Pointed: Pugin

Dinah Birch, 20 September 2007

Modern lives look prim beside the turbulent existence of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. Distractions and misfortunes proliferated throughout his career: shipwreck (he was in his own boat,...

Read more reviews

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences