Amy Sackville

This masterful historical novel was critically acclaimed on publication in 2018, but nevertheless I feel it didn’t get the recognition it truly deserves. In it, Philip IV of Spain summons the master painter Diego Velázquez to his royal court, and we follow the development of the relationship between artist and subject over the following four decades—and the slow waning of Philip’s influence and control.

Just as Thomas Cromwell sees the world through the eyes of a trader, constantly and habitually estimating the value of the homes and sumptuous clothing of his colleagues, in Painter to the King we see 17th-century Madrid through a painter’s eyes: “find the contour, the shadows and the lights… there are the different thicknesses of a folded shadow, of a velvet robe.” Like Wolf Hall, this book is a work of high literature. Sackville makes use of formal experimentation, leaving sentences half-finished, dangling—and at intervals an alternative narrative bursts through, as we catch glimpses of the author researching the book in the present day. Dazzlingly good.

From our article Books like Wolf Hall

“It’s the story of Julia who is the great-great-niece of an Arctic explorer. She’s got quite a bit of money and doesn’t really have to work very much, so she’s decided to write the story of this great-great-uncle, Edward Mackley. What we realise as the story goes on, as the two parallel stories, his story and hers, go on, is how much what he has done, the stories about what he did, have imbued her with a sense of identity.” Read more...

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Rosie Blau, Foreign Correspondent