TURNER

(Penguin £10.99) ON December 19, 1851, an elderly man died in a small house in Chelsea. The locals knew him as Admiral Booth, a red-faced old sea dog.

He had a strong connection with the sea, it is true, but not as a mariner.

The dead man was J. M. W. Turner, whose pictures of The Battle Of Trafalgar and The Fighting Temeraire made him one of the bestknown British artists.

Moyle’s pacy biography depicts a man of multiple contradictions: a painter of genius who was also a sharp businessman; a neglectful husband and father who fell in love in his 60s; a visionary artist whose fervent admirer, John Ruskin, was appalled to discover a collection of erotic drawings among his work after his death.

This book doesn’t reconcile these contradictions, but Moyle explores them with great verve.