Ferdinand Mount writes:

In As I Was Going to St Ives, his deliciously slim life of Jackson, Simon Courtauld tells the story of a remarkable human being – well, remarkable being. Even Diana Mosley, Jackson’s best friend, had to concede that he wasn’t quite human, and it takes one to know one. Courtauld provides as lucid an account of his work as the layman could hope for, and it would be hard to improve on his laconic, inconspicuously ironic treatment of Jackson’s seven marriages (six and a half to be strictly accurate), which are responsible for the book’s silly title. To call his carry-on goat-like would be grossly unfair to goats, who seem celibate, faithful and even-tempered by comparison. He married Augustus John’s daughter Poppet first, then Pamela Mitford, then the femme fatale Janetta Woolley, one of whose previous husbands was Robert Kee. On the day Janetta gave birth to Rose, his only child by any of his wives, he ran off with her half-sister Angela. When he dumped Angela three years later, he did so over lunch in the same restaurant in which he had persuaded her to leave her husband. Maybe goats are more sensitive, too.

(LRB 7 February 2008)

Michael Russell | hardback 192 pp. |ISBN: 9780859553117