Double exposure

I never thought I’d write these words.

I never thought I’d write these words. This book is unclassifiable. It belongs to a whole new genre. The field of literature has been extended! And I saw it happen.

Martin Gayford, who writes for The Spectator and whom I’ve never met, kept a diary during the seven months he spent sitting for the painter Lucian Freud in 2003/4. The book is a journal, an act of confession, a character study of Freud, a piecemeal survey of art history and an investigation into the practicalities of portraiture. It’s also a hostage drama. Gayford has no idea how many months or years the painting will take, and his abductor-cum-immortaliser asserts his right to abandon the project at any moment, without warning.

Freud comes across as an acute, opinionated, mischievous sweetie not unaffected by the self-indulgent dottiness that flowers in old age. In the postwar years, before he established his career, he slummed it in west London, where he encountered all kinds of superstars and murderers. He liked Ronnie Kray — ‘he said interesting things’ — but not Reggie. ‘He was just a thug.’ He recalls taking Francis Bacon to a smart lunch party where Noel Coward was accompanying a beautiful young soprano on the piano. Blind drunk, Bacon startled heckling, and everyone reacted with fury. ‘Because I was the one who had brought him,’ says Freud, ‘they turned on me, blaming me.’ The singer was Princess Margaret.

His memories of his celebrated grandfather are patchy but still perceptive:

He always seemed to be in a good mood. He had what many people who are really intelligent have, which is not being serious or solemn, as if they are so sure they know what they are talking about that they don’t have the need to be earnest about it.