<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

The Angel of Charleston, by Stewart MacKay - review

18 January 2014

9:00 AM

18 January 2014

9:00 AM

The Angel of Charleston Stewart MacKay

The British Library, pp.160, £16.99, ISBN: 9780712358675

Above the range in the kitchen at Charleston House is a painted inscription: ‘Grace Higgens worked here for 50 years & more, she was a good friend to all Charlestonians.’ The words are those of the art historian Quentin Bell, once one of Grace’s young charges.

Grace was taken on by the Bloomsbury group painter Vanessa Bell in 1920 to be nursemaid to her three children: Julian, 12, Quentin, nine (by her husband Clive Bell) and one-year-old Angelica (by her friend and lover Duncan Grant).

Already a subscriber? Log in

Black Friday sale

Subscribe today and get 10 weeks of The Spectator Australia for just $1

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £14.99. Tel: 08430 600033

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Black Friday sale

Subscribe today and get 10 weeks of The Spectator Australia for just $1

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close