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Books

Brian Sewell does some donkey work: how Britain’s best-known art critic put his ass on the line

Ysenda Maxtone Graham reviews The White Umbrella, a charming tale of a man who adopts a mistreated donkey

4 April 2015

9:00 AM

4 April 2015

9:00 AM

The White Umbrella Brian Sewell

Quartet, pp.184, £9.99, ISBN: 9780704373846

I suppose all children’s authors write the stories they would have liked to read as children. But in the case of this novella about a sensitive man called Mr B who rescues a donkey in Peshawar, names her Pavlova after the ballerina, and brings her overland all the way back home to Wimbledon to meet his dogs named after women painters of the 20th century, this feeling that the target reader is the childhood author himself is overwhelming.

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