An ode to Honour and Fleming’s World History of Art

The heaviest book on my shelves is Hugh Honour & John Fleming’s A World History of Art. I have just put its 960 pages on the kitchen scales: 8lbs 4oz – the weight of a bonny newborn.

If I cradle my copy tenderly today it is because Hugh Honour died last Friday 20 May at the age of 88. A World History of Art is the most famous, certainly the biggest, of his many books. At sixteen, after GCSE exams, my sixth-form history of art teacher sent me away with a copy.  I was not to come back in September unless I’d read it. The book is the scaffolding around which I have built everything I have learnt since of art history.

A World History of Art is not like Ernst Gombrich’s Story of Art. Gombrich, splendid in his own way, demands sustained, continuous reading from Lascaux to Lucian Freud. Honour and Fleming arrange their book like a great Renaissance banquet – imagine Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana.