IN BRIEF

London in the Company of Painters

By Richard Blandford Laurence King, £40

Since the rise of the panoramic city view as a subject for art in the 17th century, London has inspired artists including Hogarth, Canaletto, Whistler and Ford Madox Brown. Richard Blandford’s coffee table book, London In The Company Of

Painters, draws together the full range of views of Britain’s capital city and its inhabitants. The book is arranged as a journey west to east, much of it along the all-important River Thames, pulling together paintings of different eras but similar subjects. So, for example, Claude Monet’s Leicester

Square at Night is just a page or two away from John Bartlett’s depiction of poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square. Despite the rise of photography in the 20th century, London still attracts painters, with the construction of the current Canary Wharf among the most modern subjects in the book, featured in a 1991 painting by Carl Laubin.

Wisely, Blandford does not attempt to use the paintings to tell a detailed history of London, though he does sketch stories of landmarks and artists, peppered with quirky facts and quotes about the city. The additions complement the pictures,

The Last Tudor

the stars of this elegantly produced book, and make for an enjoyable read for anyone who loves London and art.

By Philippa Gregory Simon & Schuster, £16.99

“Learn you to die!” The story of poor Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen, is familiar; that of her younger sisters, Katherine and Mary, less so. All were (via their mother’s line) Princesses of the Blood and all paid a heavy price for being plausible heirs to the Tudor throne. For the historical novelist, history itself can be a hard taskmaster. On the plus side, each of the Grey girls seems to have been genuinely personable and struggled (on the whole, disastrously) to control her own destiny. On the downside, by choosing to write in the first person about each sister in turn, Philippa Gregory has limited herself to three increasingly bitter and unreliable narrators, each of whom spent a large proportion of their lives in captivity. The prejudices of her protagonists allow Gregory to incorporate all sorts of sensationalist allegations into the novel. But whether ardent – and knowledgeable –- fans of Tudor-bethan fiction will forgive her portrayal of Elizabeth I as cold, spiteful, lewd and vacillating is another thing entirely. ■