The Story in Art
John Fairley
Pen & Sword Books Ltd £25
If you're quick enough and follow the link on this page you'll be able to buy this book for £20 rather than the £30 published price. This is a good 'coffee-table' art book and the format of it permits many of the paintings inside to be shown as full-colour portraits that occupy an entire page.
If I have criticisms, they are that the ordering of the artwork is a little haphazard and I would also have been more inclined to say less about the artwork and let the art itself do the talking, filling those extra pages with more art. Some of the photography could have been better - I'm thinking of the section devoted to Lutyens and his work - and for that matter not all of the paintings in this book would have made it past my selection criteria. Just because a piece of art depicts scenes from, or personalities connected with, the First World War does not automatically make it good art.
At the end of the day this is an interesting pot pourri that should probably be in every school library and every civic library, assuming that there are any of the latter left.
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