The author is a long-term staff writer for ‘New Yorker’ magazine who lives outside the city on the banks of the Hudson river. In 2014 he happened to meet a stranger, a big grizzled man wearing “denim overalls, a faded baseball cap, and muddy brown boots, … [he] had a patchy rust-colored beard … [and] the complexion of a boiled lobster, to go with the build of a manatee.” This was Richard (‘Dick’ or ‘Dicky’) Conant, and Dick was slowly travelling to Florida by canoe, living rough with what he could pack in his flimsy vessel. McGrath discovered Conant had been leading this waterborne itinerant life intermittently, but more on than off, since 1999 and in that time he had covered much of the United States using its network of rivers and canals.

McGrath searched for and met Conant again several times. In their conversations it emerged that Conant quite liked the idea of his story being published in the ‘New Yorker’. He had kept detailed, rambling notes of his journeys and showed some to McGrath; the journalist set about writing an account of the man and his travels. Before publication he set out to verify the stories he had been told, and this was ultimately to become if not an obsession, at least an enduring interest and investigation of the life of Dick Conant.

Through contacts with Conant’s family and people who appeared in his accounts, McGrath was chasing a ghost, trying to resolve the enigma of Conant’s life and experiences. During his search he came across more and more people who live in the liminal spaces alongside America’s waterways; not a community as such but a sub-culture which McGrath calls “the State of Riverbank”. It became clear that Conant affected strongly the people he came across – they all remembered him. McGrath writes:

“… the mere mention of Conant’s name was like a social lubricant, a fast track to making unlikely new friends of my own. Free plane tickets, moonshine, an apartment in New Orleans, a cabin on the James [river]: these were all offered to me, no strings attached, for the simple reason that I’d inquired about a mysterious man who meant something different to each person he met.” (p158)

< – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – spoiler alert! – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – >

The book does not have a strong narrative stream; it is more a catalogue of incidents and anecdotes. It is as much the story of writing the story as about Conant himself, but still an intriguing attempt to get to know and understand a remarkable man. Conant disappeared in 2014 and the manner and cause of his disappearance is unresolved in the book. By the end we may know more about Conant’s life and travels but are no closer to really understanding the man than we were after the first chapter.

This book tells the story of five young British artists over the decade leading up to and through the first world war. All of them – Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Mark Gertler, Richard Nevinson and Dora Carrington – studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The phrase “A Crisis of Brilliance” was coined by Henry Tonks, drawing teacher at The Slade normally noted for his sarcasm towards his students and their work.

Like characters in a novel, the five artists’ hectic lives spin and weave around each other in breathless turmoil as they fall into and out of friendship and love with each other and with their sometime admirers and detractors. Critics, patrons, collectors, writers and poets dance around them as groups form and dissolve and arguments erupt and subside. Their complex relationships make quantum entanglement seem straightforward.

In his meticulously researched and annotated book Haycock paints his own word-picture of a time when Art in its broadest sense mattered, at least to the intelligentsia of the time. Artistic movements – neo-primitivism, post-impressionism, cubism, futurism, vorticism – were keenly debated. Inevitably the members of the Bloomsbury set flit in and out of the narrative, with some playing a more direct and significant role than others.

And then suddenly and apparently unexpectedly, war broke out. Within a few months public interest in ‘new’ art had evaporated. The artists themselves had to decide whether or not to join the flood of young men joining up to fight. Some later became official War Artists. The war challenged and changed each of them, with several achieving what would be regarded as their finest work. It also affected their physical and mental health in different ways.

The story really ends with the end of the war, but Haycock includes an epilogue briefly outlining the post-war lives of the five through to their deaths.

“A Crisis of Brilliance” is not an easy or quick read: I found I needed to take a break after about forty minutes. But it is highly rewarding and a notable achievement by the author. You can enjoy it just as a story, albeit one with extensive references to original sources, but it will also add significantly to your appreciation of the work of these British artists and their contemporaries.

Elizabeth Main was one of the early pioneers of Alpine mountaineering, and especially, it follows, of women’s mountaineering. She was also an accomplished self-taught photographer. This book is based on a collection of her early photographs now housed in the Upper Engadine Cultural Archives (Kulturarchiv Oberengadin) in Samedan. The four introductory essays illustrate different aspects of Elizabeth Main: her biography, as a writer of fiction, as a mountaineer, and as a photographer. The photographs include some of the earliest to be taken in the high mountains, as well as pictures capturing winter scenery and winter sports, including the Cresta Run.

As well as being Elizabeth Main (her second husband’s name), Elizabeth was also known by the names of her two other husbands, and is referred to elsewhere as both Mrs Fred Burnaby and Mrs (‘Lizzie’) le Blond. As a mountaineer her exploits in Norway rank alongside her Alpine record, but this book only deals with the time she spent in the Engadine.

The book describes the experiences of an exceptional English woman travelling alone in the Rocky Mountains in 1873. This was the time before Colorado became a State of the Union, and life was mostly hard and brutish. Isabella Bird happily endured hardships and deprivation that would daunt most modern travellers. The book is composed from the letters she sent to her sister in England.

Patrick French has written a fascinating, well-researched and readable account of the life of Sir Francis Younghusband, soldier, explorer, mountaineer, diplomat, spy, and mystic. If at the end I still find it impossible to define or understand the man, it is not for lack of trying on French’s part – I came to the conclusion that Younghusband defies categorisation. What drove him remains a mystery.

Born in the late Victorian era into a loveless and dysfunctional family, Younghusband grew up to value "manliness" and "clean living". He was shy, socially inept and politically naive. Until the last years of his life he was unable to form any close relationships with women, nor, probably, with men. French considers the possibility that Younghusband’s relationship with his sister was incestuous, but comes to no conclusion. It was certainly enduring, and for her part she remained faithful to the brother she doted upon. Younghusband’s letters to Emmie do express his fondness and regard for her, and French believes

"For the first thirty years of his life she was almost the only person to whom he could open up his heart. For all the mutual anguish that was caused by their bizarre relationship, it did at least give Francis some form of emotional security."

There were a few other women too – Nellie Douglas, to whom Younghusband paid the ultimate compliment: "You would make a splendid Colonel of a Cavalry Regiment if you were a man.", is described by French as "closer to a therapist than a lover." And there was his wife Helen, with whom he signed a pre-marital agreement that they would abstain from sex after marriage (they didn’t), and who ended her life like sister Emmie, ignored in an institution.

With men Younghusband was shy, and often felt socially inadequate. He seems to have flourished best when he had a mentor to whom he could look up – the politician Curzon being the most significant.

He drove himself to physical extremes, achieving some amazing feats of endurance, and stayed physically fit into later life. He stands out as a mountaineer and explorer in the Himalayas, although some of his exploits show outright foolhardiness, or pig-headedness. The crossing of the Murtagh Pass, which afterwards came for him to symbolise an irrevocable step, is an early example. French shows that his accounts of these exploits, particularly as they relate to his own role and his relations with others involved, benefited from the gloss of distance in space and time.

So why is he so hard to understand, and to sum up? In his life he made several astonishing 180° reversals, all of which he seems to have taken in his stride with no sense of the contradictions involved. Starting as a committed and dogmatic Imperialist, he later became a strong advocate of Indian independence. The racism by which he justified the right of "developed" nations to impose their rule on others gave way to an admiration of the spirituality and culture of India. And an attitude to sex which initially seems at best to be described as indifference, suddenly changed in the last three years of his life into a profound love affair with a married woman over 30 years younger than himself.

His own form of religion came to dominate his life once he finally returned to England. French treats this dispassionately, leaving me to wonder how Younghusband’s mish-mash of Eastern mysticism, naive Utopianism, spiritual revelation, and so on, could have attracted so many followers. There were then, and for all I know may still be now, people who believe he was a genuine spiritual leader.

But nothing in this book makes me believe he himself really believed in anything. He seems to me to be "going through the motions", playing at spirituality as he played at exploration or politics. That is not to say he was a cynical exploiter (although some aspects of his relationship with his "soul mate" Madeline Lees betray the exploitative characteristics of the professional guru). Nor by "playing" do I imply a lack of serious intent: I get the impression that Younghusband was always serious about the various roles he played. French leaves me feeling Younghusband didn’t so much believe in the spirituality he preached, rather that he thought it would somehow be "good" or "right" [my words] if what he said were to be true; that the planet Altair really was home to a race of highly intelligent and advanced beings, or that Madeline might give birth to a new "god-child".

Although he played at these things, he played earnestly and (mostly) honestly, but ultimately with only a shallow understanding. He did not trouble too much to look for reasons or motives, whether his own or other people’s, which left him open to exploitation. Despite his heroic exploits there are few lasting achievements to his name. When a friend recommended this book and offered to lend it to me, I knew Younghusband’s name but couldn’t recall how or why I knew it. Now I know why I didn’t know.