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Wigtown Festival: Louisa Young on My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You

People ask writers where they get their ideas. Here’s the story of how the origin of my most recent novel, My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You was in my first book, A Great Task of Happiness: the Life of Kathleen Scott (1995).

Twenty years ago, having been told by Johnny Cash that “You gotta be who you are”, I accepted the embarrassing truth that I really did think I was a writer. I just had to write some books. Waiting at home were my grandmother’s fascinating diaries. She – Kathleen Bruce – started them in 1910, when her husband, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, set out on his second expedition to Antarctica. They were to be a record of their new son, Peter, for Con (as he was known) to read on his return. She continued them until her death in 1947.

She was an orphan from the age of six, the youngest of 11 children. She ran away to Paris to study art in 1901. She was a sculptor; she studied with Rodin, who introduced her to Isadora Duncan, whose illegitimate child she helped to deliver. She worked in refugee camps in Macedonia. She knew Aleister Crowley (hated him) and shared a flat with Eileen Gray, and Gertrude Stein thought her beautiful.

Back in London, she met Scott. They married. This part of the story is well known, especially this year, with the centenary of his death and those of Bowers, Wilson, Evans and Oates. The beauty of their diaries and the letters between them remain astonishing.

Kathleen, a widow and single mother, became a professional sculptor and befriended her well-known sitters: Asquith would come to tea regularly during the first years of the First World War; George Bernard Shaw said his relationship with her – she was a powerful character – was the closest he ever came to homosexuality.

Peter grew up to be Sir Peter Scott, described by Sir David Attenborough as “the patron saint” of conservation. Later, Kathleen married my grandfather, who became a cabinet minister, and had another son.
Writing her biography was a joy – letters from Max Beerbohm, sightings of the young James Mason, a photo of her riding on the cowcatcher of a train across Texas. Fun poured from her, and at the heart of it so much loss.
It was easy, hurtling through that incredible life, to hurtle past gateways into other worlds. For example: she worked briefly during the First World War with Major Sir Harold Gillies, modelling the faces of wounded soldiers, as part of the process of maxillofacial reconstructive surgery. This hideous, yet miraculous, art was racing ahead in that period, with antisepsis, anaesthesia, a constant supply of otherwise healthy men with shattered faces from the trenches, and the genius of men like Gillies.
Researching, I came across photographs, and drawings by Kathleen’s teacher at the Slade, Henry Tonks, which never left me. The courage of the doctors and the damaged young men was quite extraordinary, and yet, in a war on that scale, quite everyday. How can human beings cope with that? How do we deal with what is unbearable?
Fifteen years later, one of those photos greeted me again, on the wall of an exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation in London. Near it was displayed an unused field postcard, for a wounded young man to fill in at the casualty Clearing Station. It read: “My Dear… (fill in as applicable), I wanted to tell you before any telegram arrived that I have received a slight/serious (delete as applicable) wound in my… (fill in as applicable).”
If that isn’t an invitation to write a novel, I don’t know what is. It held an untold story. I imagined having to fill in this card, and the circumstances under which it would come about. I thought: “You’d lie.” That was the first scene I wrote.
You often hear: “He never talked about the war.” I bet some wanted to. The men in the photographs from the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup seemed to me to be desperate to talk, and in their own words – which, with a novelist’s presumptuousness, and remembering my grandmother, I gave them.
* Louisa Young will talk about her novel My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You (HarperCollins) on October 5 at 1.30pm and about her biography A Great Task of Happiness: the Life of Kathleen Scott (Hydraulic Press) on October 3 at 4.30pm; wigtownbookfestival.com

'Olympic-lit' leads race for Christmas book sales

Just weeks ago they were winning medal after medal in front of ecstatic crowds, but now Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pendleton are hoping to break new records - in book sales.

Pendleton's autobiography Between the Lines has already been published, and Ennis's as yet unnamed autobiography, out in November, will join cyclists Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins's personal accounts of their sporting lives on the shelves in the long run up to Christmas.

The dying embers of Britain's enthusiasm for all things Olympic may also benefit more peripheral figures of the Games such as presenter Clare Balding - whose new book My Animals and Other Family is out today - and LOCOG Chair Seb Coe, who will release Running My Life - the Autobiography in November.

More than three times the daily average number of books were published today, ahead of publishing's so-called "Super Thursday" next week.

According to Philip Stone, Charts Editor of The Bookseller magazine, the leading trade journal in publishing, the Olympic effect could lead to a very merry Christmas for the athletes - unless they saturate the market.

"I think it's going to be massive," he said, "They've been in the public eye this summer, and success in publishing seems to be down to how well they are doing at that time. Sport generally is producing a lot of books, for example for cricketers, but given the latter's performance a similar effect looks unlikely."
He added: "[Clare] Balding has joined national treasure status, which has taken people by surprise."
Stone warned that unless the onslaught of so-called "Olympic-lit" was marketed carefully, the phenomenon of last Christmas, when a flood of comedians' autobiographies failed to sell as expected, could be repeated.
"There is always the risk they will end up beating each other up in the book shops. Like comedians last year - no one broke out from the rest."
And the risk could be even higher with publishers pushing for earlier Christmas sales. "I think that once back to school starts, Christmas starts," he added.
This will also be the first "Kindle Christmas", as publishers worry that the British public will fail to buy expensive hardbacks after the highest ever sales of the eBook reader.

David Cameron must find a way to stop the takeover of BAE systems

As London's lawyers and bankers buzz excitedly around the honey pot, BAE Systems has announced that it is in talks to merge with the European defence giant EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company.
Immersed in researching a book on the financial crisis, this BAE proposal reminds me of the willy-waving mega-deals which bankers did at the height of the boom. Strategic interests of the country? Concerns of the customer? Don't be silly, this is globalised crony-capitalism and there are many millions to be made harvesting the fees from forcing it through.
Only BAE Systems is not a bank or a confectionery company. It is the UK's premier defence company, a rich source of native defence know-how and domestic employment. Ensuring its survival as a British entity should rank well above the rights of bankers and executives to make a killing. As Julian Lindley-French, academic and author, puts it: "BAE Systems is selling Britain down the Euro drain".
And this is, despite the hype, not a merger. It is obviously a takeover, with the Germans and French ending up with a 60 per cent controlling interest between them. Can anyone imagine the reaction of France and Germany if the situation was reversed?
Here, for once, I must disagree with my good friend Con Coughlin. Con has reservations about the deal but sees it as sensible in an age of austerity if certain guarantees can be made to protect British interests.
I don't think that is possible. The Europeans are making a grab for BAE Systems because they want access to its markets in America and elsewhere. They seek to eliminate a competitor. I'll wager the German and French political leaderships also see the opportunity to use the threat of job losses – or withdrawal of investment from the UK – during a future row with the UK about potential withdrawal from the EU. Any guarantees given now about jobs or research facilities will not be worth the paper they are not yet written on.
For David Cameron this is another enormous test, cutting right across his polices on Europe, the economy and defence. Just a few days ago, ministers were wittering on about an industrial policy. Here's a real test of their nerve in that area. As for Europe, the Eurofanatics are, as Jose Manuel Barroso indicated, about to pursue the idea of an EU federation, a set-up which Britain has no wish to be part of. It would be most unwise for a leader of the Conservative party to choose this moment to allow the swallowing up of BAE Systems, especially when his party is also so restless.
Tory backbenchers are already waking up to the potential for calamity if the merger takeover goes through and grandees from both sides of the Westland affair will surely be stirring soon. By the time they do, the Prime Minister had better have worked out a way to disappoint the bankers and ditch this deal.

Which home improvement or extension adds most to your house price?

Which home improvement or extension will add most to your house price? That's a pressing question for hundreds of thousands of families living in homes too small for their current needs who are being offered a potential solution to their predicament by government proposals to ease planning restrictions.
The credit crisis, which hit Britain five years ago this week with a run on Northern Rock, caused mortgage availability to freeze up and the number of home sales to collapse; trapping many families in properties they would have left years ago in happier times. The simple fact is that while macroeconomic storms blow overhead, children continue to be born and require more room in which to grow up.
So the desire or need for bigger accommodation is like many personal finance decisions; it’s often more personal than financial. Regardless of interest rates or the fate of the euro, wives require more space than girlfriends, young mothers more rooms than brides.
Now the solution for many families is to improve not move – and government proposals should make it easier to do so. Almost 200,000 households apply each year for permission to make improvements such as conservatories, rear extensions and garage conversions. Application fees are typically £150 and professional fees often cost thousands more.
The process can leave home owners mired in red tape for months, even though around 90 per cent of applications are approved eventually. The new rules, intended to take effect next month, will make it unnecessary to obtain planning permission for single-storey rear extensions and conservatories extending up to six metres from the back wall of semi-detached properties and up to eight metres from the back of detached properties.
Both limits are double the current “existing permitted development” rules – or de minimus waivers from planning consent – and are temporary facilities, due to expire in 2015, with the intention of stimulating economic activity as soon as possible.
But which kind of home improvement is most likely to pay for itself in terms of raising house prices or the saleability of your property? Terry Holmes, a director at estate agents Beresfords, was emphatic: “An additional bedroom gets my vote every time over a kitchen extension or conservatory as it can increase the asking price by much more.
“A huge proportion of the UK’s housing stock has three bedrooms but few have four. A fourth bedroom extension will be sought by buyers looking for a property suitable for older children or elderly relatives. “However, it is important not to make any additional room too specialised. It may suit you but it could deter some buyers who might think that they are paying more for a space they would not use.”
That raises the important point that ‘living room’ means different things to different people. While many might value an extra bedroom above all other home improvements, other homebuyers will have different priorities. Carl Davenport, a director of estate agents Chesterton Humberts, said: “An open plan kitchen or breakfast room would allow you to gain permanent square footage, which is something that a conservatory on the back of a property would not necessarily be able to provide as this is a seasonal room.”
Aspirations are all very well but the English weather often delivers a cold douche of reality; conservatories are not much fun in the bleak mid-winter or indeed any month with an ‘r’ in it. Estate agents experienced in the art of selling property tend to favour brick and tile extensions over glass and PVC conservatories.
Before spending thousands of pounds on any home improvement it makes sense to conduct a cost/benefit analysis. Precise details will depend on the location of your property and local building costs – two factors which are often closely correlated.
Jamie Lester, head of Haus Properties, a south west London estate agent, describes how a cost/benefit analyis might look in his neighbourhood: “The average cost to build a rear extension around here is approximately £150 to £250 per square foot and properties here are selling for in excess of £600 per square foot, so you will always add value by adding a good quality extension.
“For example, a good extension on a 600 square foot two bedroom garden flat with access via the side, currently worth about £550,000 to £650,000, would be to add an extra bedroom and ensuite bathroom, and extend the kitchen or living area into a large open plan area with bi-fold doors onto the garden. This would cost approximately £50,000 or £60,000 but the property would now be worth in excess of £700,000 or £750,000.”
Clearly, the cash values for costs and benefits will vary from area to area. But it is worth remembering that, wherever you are, any increase in the value of your home will be tax-free. Even so, do try to keep a sense of proportion and resist the temptation to get carried away. Lindsay Cuthill of Savills, explained: “It’s important for an extension to be in keeping with the existing property and my advice is to avoid overbuilding.
“An extension that eats significantly into a tiny garden will not achieve optimal value. And in response to concerns that a relaxation of planning controls will open the door to cowboy builders, there will still be the safeguard of building regulation and controls.”
While the government’s proposals remain open for consultation and details have yet to be finalised, it is understood that the changes will not affect loft extensions because the new exemptions only apply to single-storey buildings. This restriction is intended to minimise disputes and litigation between neighbours and planning authorities about higher extensions that might affect the privacy of nearby properties and gardens.

Amazon is inviting Waterstones to top itself

“Nice bookshop you’ve got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”
It’s hard not to picture Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, sauntering up to Waterstones with a cigar between his lips and a tommy gun hidden behind his back. The deal between the internet giant and the bricks-and-mortar retailer has looked unbalanced ever since details were first revealed in May. Now even Waterstones' managing director is publicly acknowledging the pitfalls.
The Bookseller reports that James Daunt has told the snappily named Independent Publishers Guild Digital Quartetly Meeting: “There are substantial difficulties for [Waterstones] around working with our major competitor. But we think we have an agreement that protects us from some of the most significant bear traps that sit there and there are some major upsides for us.”
With all due respect to Daunt, that seems like wishful thinking akin to a child thinking it can cram a pony into an inner-city flat. The balance of power is entirely skewed in Amazon’s favour and the deal puts Waterstones in the position of pusher for the online retailer’s particular brand of drug – instant access to e-books. The chain’s Read For Free offer, which will allow readers to sample certain titles for free in-store for up to an hour a day, even recalls the perennial creed of the savvy dealer – the first hit is free.
Waterstones will get a cut off all Kindle devices sold in its stores, but it is not the exclusive high street retail partner and is simply benefiting from Amazon’s willingness to sell the traditional Kindle and its tablet siblings, the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, at a loss. Once the customer has left Waterstones store with a new Kindle device in their hand, the retailer’s take is finished.
Unless the customer buys e-books on the company’s own in-store WiFi network, Waterstones gets no cut of future sales. Effectively, the book chain is shepherding customers over to Amazon. The sheer convenience of being able to shop for new titles directly from their Kindle means most of them are unlikely to darken the doors of a real-world bookshop very often in the future.
While many people are still wedded to the experience of reading a traditional book, customers seduced by the Kindle tend to stick with it. Russ Grandinetti, the Amazon vice-president who heads up its Kindle efforts, told the author Peter Nowak earlier this year: “Customers buy three to four times as many books after they buy the Kindle device.” If that’s true, and the Kindle makes for more engaged readers, Waterstones is actively going to be losing valuable customers.
Bill Hicks had a riff on western policy and the first Gulf War which seems oddly appropriate here:
“[We’re] throwing the pistol at the sheep herder’s feet: ‘Pick it up.’ ‘I don’t wanna pick it up, mister, you’ll shoot me.’ ‘Pick up the gun’. ‘Mister, I don’t want no trouble, huh. I just came down here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don’t even know what gingham is, but she goes through about 10 rolls a week of that stuff. I ain’t looking for no trouble mister.’ ‘Pick up the gun.’ [gunshot sound] ‘You all saw him… he had a gun.' ”
Waterstones has volunteered to be the sheep herder, and is not just picking up the gun but selling an arsenal to customers who will help Amazon put it out of its misery. High streets without a decent book shop will be a desperately sad sight, but Waterstones is just hastening its own irrelevance.

Bronze, Royal Academy of Arts

Bronze, the autumn blockbuster at the Royal Academy, is a big blast of a show — a grand exhibition of epic conception and sweep that will leave people exhilarated by the stunning quality of the works on display. There isn’t much narrative development or art-historical argument — indeed, you could say that there isn’t any argument at all — but that’s fine: while it won’t tax the mind, it will ravish the eye. Here is a show to make you feel, not think.

The concept is simple. Professor David Ekserdjian, the exhibition’s curator, has brought together more than 150 bronze sculptures from all over the world. They span aeons and continents, but have one thing in common: they all demonstrate the versatility and quasi-magical properties of a medium that has bewitched artists since at least the fourth millennium BC.

Bronze — an alloy in which copper is usually mixed with tin — is both durable and ductile, meaning that artists can achieve gravity-defying sculptural effects that would be impossible in stone. In addition, artists working in bronze can create supple surfaces alive with exquisite detail, thanks to the so-called “lost-wax technique”. First used by the ancients, this complex process essentially allows artists to replicate perfectly a wax model in bronze. (It and its variants are explained in crystal-clear fashion using step-by-step guides in a subsidiary room within the exhibition.)

Grasping something of the time, technique and expense behind casting bronze sculpture is as cerebral as this exhibition gets. Mostly, we are invited to marvel and gawp. The exhibition is divided into themes (figures, gods, animals, heads, reliefs, and so on), and Ekserdjian and his team have pulled off the delicate diplomatic coup of persuading museums to part temporarily with some of their most prized possessions.

I was thrilled, for instance, to see the Chimaera of Arezzo, an Etruscan masterpiece on loan from Florence. With a serpent for a tail, and a goat’s head grafted onto a lion’s back, this snarling, fire-breathing monster appears like a genetically modified freak from a dystopian future. It could so easily look absurd, yet the Etruscan sculptor who made it around 400 BC has created something ferocious and believable. In places, such as the rib cage, arched back, and flanks, the modelling is tremendously subtle.

The Chimaera inaugurates a delightful couple of galleries devoted to sculptures of animals. We see a surprisingly modern-looking mottled turkey by Giambologna, as well as Il Porcellino, or “little piglet”, a 17th-century bronze replica of an ancient marble statue of a wild boar. For centuries, it adorned a popular fountain in Florence — its bulbous snout still shines from having been petted and stroked by passers-by.
A malignant, upright praying mantis by the 20th-century French sculptor Germaine Richier looks like it has stalked off the set of a dark film by Tim Burton. It lurks opposite a sinister spider, mounted above head height on a wall, by Louise Bourgeois. In the same room, Picasso’s Baboon and Young (1951), for which the artist cast a combination of two of his son Claude’s toy cars to create the ape’s head, is a cheeky reminder of the transformative potential of art.
There is no doubt that bronze sculpture reached a high point in classical antiquity: just witness the powerful portrait head of a glowering Hellenistic king discovered in Bulgaria in 2004, or the Dancing Satyr from the fourth century BC that opens the show and seemingly flies through mid-air, convulsed in ecstatic abandon.
But there are many stupendous works of art from beyond the Western canon, too, including several beautiful sculptures from Nigeria that were made in the 14th and 15th centuries, and a host of intricate Chinese vessels, one memorably cast in the shape of an elephant. Among the out-and-out highlights is the Chariot of the Sun, which was discovered in a Danish peat bog in 1902, and probably dates to the 14th century before Christ. An ethereal horse supported by four wheels pulls a disc decorated with gold leaf, representing the sun. It is a beacon of sophistication from a benighted period of history.
One of the chief joys of the show lies in discovering parallels between different works of art. The Evening Shadow, an extraordinary Etruscan statuette of an elongated figure that’s really just a sinuous sliver of metal, a skinny will-o’-the-wisp, has been placed near The Cage by the 20th-century sculptor Alberto Giacometti, whom it influenced.
An impressive and rare full-length portrait of a Roman aristocrat stands opposite Ghiberti’s St Stephen, another large figure energised by dynamic folds of drapery. The juxtaposition speaks of the interest in antiquity that surfaced during the Renaissance, even if the Roman statue, which was discovered at Herculaneum in 1743, couldn’t possibly have influenced Ghiberti’s work, which dates from the 1420s.
Not everything is of the highest calibre. For instance, Georg Petel’s portrait bust of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden has an overinflated melon-head that looks like a balloon about to burst. A couple of early 15th-century statuettes of satyrs courting or coupling appear awkward rather than racy.
Moreover, I didn’t quite see the logic of presenting bronze copies of sculptures originally carved in marble, such as Michelangelo’s tipsy Bacchus, or Bernini’s scintillating Damned Soul. (Though you could argue that Francois Girardon’s 17th-century copy of the Laocoön offers a vision of the bronze original upon which the famous ancient marble group in the Vatican was probably based.)
And while the Lisson Gallery, who are listed among the exhibition’s supporters, should be applauded for helping to facilitate such a magnificent show, the inclusion in the latter rooms of several artists on their books (Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg, and Richard Deacon) seems close to self-promotion.
But wandering among these sculptures is ultimately a thrilling and invigorating business. As I looked up at Rustici’s monumental figures of St John the Baptist preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee, or at a 19th-century cast of Cellini’s famous Perseus and Medusa, I felt as though I had entered a timeless and enchanted realm inhabited by superhumans and gods.
The exhibition isn’t for scholars who enjoy splitting hairs over minutiae of style or chronology. But sometimes it is a relief as well as a pleasure to visit a show that simply delivers straightforward aesthetic delight.

Catherine the Great: An Enlightened Empress, National Museum of Scotland, review

New exhibition Catherine the Great: An Enlightened Empress at the National Museum of Scotland shows the former Russian ruler to be a tyrant with the best possible taste, finds Richard Dorment.

                                  

Catherine the Great is a gift to biographers, and yet time and again she’s defeated even the best of them. The problem is that the scale on which she lived and the range of her accomplishments are just too immense to compress between the covers of single book. So when I heard that the National Museum of Scotland was to stage an exhibition that would cover her dynastic politics, foreign wars, cultural interests, intellectual pursuits and activities as a patron and collector, I thought the idea was barking. The NMS is big, but only a building the size of the Hermitage is big enough to do such a show justice.

But blow me down, the blockbuster sent from the Hermitage to the NHS to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Catherine’s succession to the Russian throne does a remarkably efficient job of documenting the key moments in her life by setting them in a visual context. On show are 600 objects associated with her, including the clothes she wore, the furniture she lived with, and the paintings and porcelain she collected.

What a story it has to tell. Born in 1729 in a backwoods grand duchy in Germany, at the age of 15 Sophie-Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst was summoned to Russia by the unmarried Empress Elizabeth (daughter of Peter the Great), who had chosen the young princess to marry her designated successor, a gormless Swedish teenager called the Grand Duke Peter.

The brilliance of her match with the heir presumptive was marred only by his insanity, drunkenness, infidelity, political ineptitude and personal cruelty. For 18 years she endured his company while discreetly consoling herself with lovers, one of whom apparently supplied her with her successor, the future Emperor Paul I. Having converted to the Greek Orthodox faith and become a fluent Russian speaker, when her husband succeeded to the throne in 1761 as Peter III, Catherine was in a position to conspire with powerful nobles to have him deposed and murdered, so that she could rule in his place.

And that’s just the prologue. The rest of the exhibition focuses on the 34 years of the reign of this intelligent, educated, and talented monarch.
Catherine ruled, of course, as an absolute despot who practised a form of realpolitik that would have interested Mr Putin. Though she brought stability to Russia by granting greater privileges to the nobility, during her reign she fought successful wars with Sweden and the Ottoman Empire, and annexed the Crimea, the Northern Caucasus and Poland to Russia.
The show tends to gloss over the fact that under this enlightened despot almost a million free peasants were reduced to a condition of serfdom, to explore instead her friendships with liberal thinkers of the French Enlightenment such as Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire, her library of 40,000 books, the building programme that transformed St Petersburg into the neoclassical city it is today, and above all her status as one of the greatest collectors who ever lived.
Though she disliked the baroque and favoured the neoclassical style in both architecture and furniture, her taste in paintings and sculpture tended to be inclusive. Only someone with knowledge and discrimination could have formed the collections that today serve as her monument in the Hermitage.
Her agents scoured Europe to find individual pictures and whole collections that she acquired sight unseen, including, famously those of Robert Walpole and the Duc de Choiseul. But Catherine knew what she was doing, and if she opened a crate shipped from abroad and found that the quality of their contents did not meet her high standards, she reacted with fury. Nor did she hesitate to dispose of the objects and paintings that did not please her.
For all its splendours, for me the sheer scale of her acquisitions lent her collection a slightly impersonal feel. Unlike contemporaries such as Frederick the Great, who loved Dutch pictures and hated modern Italian painting, or Madame de Pompadour, whose favourite painter was François Boucher, Catherine’s collecting was not a highly personal expression of her personality. She sought the best or rarest works of art in part because she understood the prestige this would confer on Russia in the eyes of the world.
This is something that a visitor to this show who hadn’t already been to the Hermitage wouldn’t guess. The selection of mostly minor works by little known painters in the last gallery is so lacklustre that what should be seen as the visual climax and crowning achievement of Catherine’s reign turns out to be a damp squib. We’ll have to wait until 2014, when the Hermitage is scheduled to send pictures from Robert Walpole’s collection back to this country on temporary loan to Houghton Hall in Norfolk, to get some measure of the staggering quality of her acquisitions.
Still, there are compensations galore. As you would expect, Catherine looked to the most prestigious foreign manufacturers to supply her with porcelain or furniture. In this show we see an example of the “green frog” service, which consisted of 1,000 pieces of Sèvres porcelain in that inimitable, unearthly shade of blue, each piece hand painted with a view of the British Isles. We are also shown several superbly crafted pieces by the neoclassical German cabinet maker David Roentgen.
But even more interesting to me are the objects in this show that were made in Russia by Europeans or under European influence. An Englishman called Ferdinand Davie, for example, converted an arms factory in Tula into one that manufactured chess pieces and later steel tables, chairs and footstools of astonishing delicacy. In this show an elegant steel box containing intricately crafted chess pieces gives some idea of the quality they achieved. Likewise, of all the many official portraits of Catherine, the one that stands out in this show is a version of a state portrait by the Swedish painter Vigilius Eriksen, who depicts her in the green uniform of a horse guard mounted on her white stallion Brilliant. And the show rightly emphasises the role the Scots played in the army and at court, in particular Charles Cameron, the architect who designed, built and decorated two of her palaces outside St Petersburg, at Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk.
The picture of Catherine that emerges from a show like this is of a ruler who profoundly understood that monarchy is a form of theatre. It is not too much to suggest that she conceived of her reign in visual terms in the knowledge that she was permanently on stage, the focus of attention in every scene. Everything about her, from her appearance and her surroundings to the ornately carved wooden sledges used during the winter carnival, was calculated for its theatrical effect. Though a powerful and effective ruler, she was also a great performer, which makes her one of those historical figures who, like Louis XIV, remain, for me at least, forever elusive, ultimately unknowable.

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