'A is a Critic: Writings from The Spectator', by Andrew Lambirth - review

The following novel re-assessment is typical of Andrew Lambirth:

Although Eileen Agar exhibited with Miro, Magritte and Ernst, she was never a ‘card-carrying surrealist’. The origins of her work were rooted in ‘the great English Romantic tradition’ — medieval illumination, William Blake, Edward Lear.

Lambirth approaches painters and paintings not through the prism of current fashion but in the light of his extensive knowledge and through looking, intently and without prejudice.

It is what makes his weekly judgments in The Spectator always refreshing and his writing unlike that of any other critic since David Sylvester. This collection of his interviews, exhibition reviews and ‘reflections’, taken from his Spectator pieces over the past 15 years, is full of such perceptions.