‘When everything has been said which can intelligently be brought against him there remains a figure of essential artistic integrity and importance . . . From the fashionable chatter of his period, vapid and interminable, he has plucked, like tiny brilliant feathers from the breast of a bird, the particles of his design’
Evelyn Waugh
‘Like a jewelled and clockwork nightingale among London sparrows’
John Betjeman
‘Causes a cavalcade of wish-fulfilment myths to sweep gaily past the reader’s vision’
Anthony Powell