In an afterword Martin Gayford says that he would like his book about the painter, John Constable, to give the same pleasure that a novel would. He succeeds wonderfully. Not in the sense of invented dialogue or fictional scenes. There is no need. His characters all wrote letters or diaries full of colour and circumstance. Their background would be familiar to readers of Jane Austen, a writer Mr Gayford often and aptly refers to: a few families thrown together by class, alive to every social nuance, ears pricked for money and rank. It was a world of wills and bequests, where young lovers lived on dreams until old curmudgeons fell off their perches.
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