Sometimes when you see a photograph in a book you want to punch it. I experienced that urge halfway through this fascinating collection of the letters of Ida John, when I came to the photograph of her husband, the artist Augustus John, sitting propped up in bed in their rented house in Essex in 1905, playing the concertina with a cigarette hanging out of his bearded mouth. Apparently he used to laze around like that all morning, before reading a novel all afternoon and spending the evening peacefully drawing.
