"Four Portraits: Boswell, Gibbon, Sterne and Wilkes" by Peter Quennell

I have always admired the writing of Peter Quennell (1905-1993) and am keen if I can to read all is major books over the coming years. He was principally a literary biographer, but he also published poems, some travel writing, a couple of novels, entertaining volumes of autobiography and reviews and journalism galore. He worked for some years as a part-time copy-editor in the advertising industry and edited journals, including 'History Today' which he co-founded in 1951 and which, thankfully, continues to thrive today.

His 'Four Portraits' was published eighty years ago this week and is a complete pleasure to read. Written for the general reader without footnotes or unnecessary theoretical varnishing, Quennell explores the lives of four late eighteenth century figures, each of whom made a major personal contribution not just to their own age, but continue left a lasting legacy that remains relevant. They were interesting men with all manner of flaws who knew one another and were highly influential in their different fields - a biographer, an historian, a novelist and a radical journalist who became a politician. The book a superb introduction to the four figures and their Age. The writing is elegant, entertaining and authoritative.

Peter Quennell himself was a most interesting man, and one who still awaits his own biographer. There is plenty of rich material there. His was a long and varied life that spanned the twentieth century. He wrote thirty books and edited more than thirty more. He had an uneasy relationship with his parents, was married five times and had several further intimate affairs. He was eccentric, opinionated and brilliant, being acquainted with all the leading literary figures of his time, while enjoying close relationships with many , Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell, Cyril Connolly, the Sitwells and John Betjeman among them. Such was his life and work that writing Quennell's biography would surely be a highly enjoyable endeavour.