Sarah Vine

The Ghost in the machine

The waspish critic, who died earlier this year, is also a haunting presence in this paean to Henry Royce and his magnificent creation

issue 12 December 2015

One of the great joys of the late Brian Sewell’s style of writing was his almost child-like bluntness. He had a three-year-old’s lack of tact when it came to saying what he thought of things, be it art or food or life in general.

The fact that he combined such unflinching honesty with intelligence, insight and erudite delivery was what made him one of the great critics. Always entertaining, occasionally right, cheerfully abusive, he showed us the world through his pince-nez, and it was both terrifying and magnificent.

Despite a weakness for baroque vocabulary, he was a master of economy. It took him only a few choice lines to demolish a victim: Tracey Emin was a ‘self-regarding exhibitionist’, Hockney a ‘vulgar prankster’, Banksy had ‘no virtue’, the work of Damian Hirst ‘I can sum it up as shiny shit’.

He also had the one thing that most critics these days lack: a healthy set of prejudices that he was not afraid to share.

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