Paper Museum, by Andrew Graham-Dixon (Fontana, £14.99 in UK)

Andrew Graham-Dixon is the art critic of the London Independent, as well as the author of a book on British art, and this is …

Andrew Graham-Dixon is the art critic of the London Independent, as well as the author of a book on British art, and this is a collection of his essays and reviews - mostly, I should say, the latter. He covers a wide range of interests and subjects, ranging from Holbein, Poussin and Sassetta down to Warhol and Guston, and usually has something relevant and interesting to say about them. He is not a polemical critic, and there is an absence of the heat and dust of topical controversies - though occasionally he steps aside to do a demolition job on, say, Mengs. It is all very readable and well informed, but with sixty pieces included, it is inevitable that some of these are simply too short for book form.