We had an event in the gallery tonight to celebrate the publication of Giovanni Aloi’s new book about Lucian Freud’s very beautiful and surprisingly numerous paintings, drawings and etchings of plant life, which are not so familiar as part of his oeuvre because they are seldom exhibited. The event was made the more interesting in that he was in conversation with Annie Freud, Lucian’s oldest daughter, who read from her own poetry, including one inspired by inheriting from her father a Biedermeier chest-of-drawers, and spoke of the experience of sitting for her portrait and her father’s deep knowledge and love of poetry, particularly some of the nonsense verse included in W.H. Auden’s anthology, The Poet’s Tongue.