1967, as a fourteen year old I wanted to be a great artist and haunted the bookshops near my school for books on art. One day in the window the new Peregrine paperback imprint of Kenneth Clark’s ‘Ruskin Today’ appeared. Its 1960’s livery consisted of a magnified part of Ruskin’s nose and eye in psychedelic colours. Inside was a section ‘Characteristics of a great painter’. That was enough for me. It was a book to be seen with, even if I found it more or less unreadable at the time. It didn’t make me a great artist but it ended up shaping the course of my life!




Last modified 5 March 2019