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Books

Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark: pen friends, not true friends

The 34-year correspondence between Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark was a substitute for a friendship that didn’t happen, says Duncan Fallowell, reviewing My Dear BB, edited by Robert Cumming

25 April 2015

9:00 AM

25 April 2015

9:00 AM

My Dear BB: The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark, 1925–1959 Robert Cumming (edited and annotated)

Yale, pp.583, £25, ISBN: 9780300207378

Robert Cumming’s opening sentence is: ‘Kenneth Clark and Bernard Berenson first met in the summer of 1925.’ One is then transported to terraces of cypress and statuary, sunshine and high art, Edith Wharton and Paul of Yugoslavia cooing over a balustrade. Clark was 22 and had just finished at Oxford; he was ‘doing’ Italy with Charles Bell, Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean.

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