It was the launch last night of Alan Bowness’s Writings 1950-2016, 602 pages of text, including a comprehensive and model bibliography beginning with a letter he wrote in his school magazine, The Gower, in July 1946 in which he wrote how ‘In these days of a general lowering of cultural standards it is a great mistake to suggest that the official magazine of a school which is proud of its progressive tradition should surrender its high standards to curry popularity’. The bibliography ends with the contribution Bowness made to a radio programme about Anthony Blunt in June 2020 (he studied art history under Blunt at the Courtauld in the early 1950s and it was Blunt who hired him to teach there in 1957 which he did up until his appointment to be Director of the Tate in 1980; one of the odd things I learned was that Blunt disapproved of Bowness inviting contemporary artists to talk to the students as if a knowledge of contemporary art practice would corrupt their understanding of history).

The book has been beautifully designed by Mark Thomson, who did a lot of work for Karsten Schubert and his publishing house, Ridinghouse. He has also designed (also beautifully) John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture.

I am intrigued by the cover photograph taken in December 1968 of Bowness in his office at the Courtauld studying what looks like a black-and-white lantern slide. It was taken by a German photographer, Erhard Wehrmann and curiously replicates the photograph of Anthony Blunt by Snowdon:-