First Friends

Ronald Blythe (ed)

Editions

Review

Ronald Blythe has taken his inspiration from a valuable cache of intimate letters that he found in the farmhouse of his closest friends after their deaths. It uncovers more than a decade of the lives of a small group of painters who met at the Slade School in 1913: John and Paul Nash, Christine Kühlenthal (who would become John’s wife) and the puckish Dora Carrington.  It was, of course, a decade over which the First World War would cast a dark shadow, and the practical and philosophical business of war looms over the banter.  Beautifully produced and written, as might be expected from this writer (his Akenfield has been a classic since its publication some years ago), the book is generously illustrated with paintings and  photographs, and reproduces lots of jolly sketches taken from the letters, many of them by Carrington. - review by John Wyse Jackson (Seán)