Rating: 5 out of 5

This is a book to accompany an exhibition of the same name held at the National Portrait Gallery in London and I read it on the train coming home from seeing the portraits in situ. The exhibition, and book, features 14 portraits painted between around 1520 and 1640 who are now believed not to be who they were bought as by the National Portrait Gallery. Eight authors have imagined the stories behind these paintings. Some are written as encyclopaedia style entries, some as letters, others as very short stories. My favourite is “I Am Mary Douglas” by Minette Wallters whose short 1.5 page reflection is written well enough to connect emotionally. The final section “Did my hero look like that?” by Tarnya Cooper is an interesting explanatory piece educating on how it came to be that such beautiful portraits have lost the details of their subjects. A great souvenir of an interesting, if small, exhibition.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account