Fiona MacCarthy (1940–2020)

I read this not long after it first came out, when the National Museum of New Zealand had adopted Gill Sans and Perpetua as their official typeface. I doubt they'd do so today. Gill's life-long incest with his sister Gladys, his sexual experiments with his daughters, his attempts at shagging the maids, secretaries, his friend's wives, and every other woman he met were quietly papered over in previous biographies, despite Gill keeping a neatly-written diary of his sexual exploits, with symbols and a helpful key. From this we learn about his forays into bestiality, which led type designer Barry Deck to create Canicopulus Script (1989), a face where the o's have little tails above them.

Gill is (or at least was) a revered British sculptor and typographer, fervent Catholic convert (at the time he was taking Catholic instruction he was also working on a life-size marble sculpture of his own penis), pillar of the progressive Left, and creator of public monuments like the Stations of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral and Prospero and Ariel outside Broadcasting House. How do we reconcile these with his sexual voraciousness? (Last year one guy decided taking a hammer to Prospero and Ariel was the solution.) Fiona McCarthy has to deal with this contradictory life in this superb biography. She's explicit but not prurient, and explicates Gill’s complicated personal philosophy and religious belief which, at least for him, squared the circle, without letting him off the hook. It's a model for a biographer tackling such explosive revelations.

A typographic note: the cover is in Gill Sans, the text is not one of Gill's (the typeface choice sadly isn't mentioned in the colophon); the design is lovely but with frequent mentions of the Gills' home Capel-y-ffin I wish designer Ron Costley had used an ffi ligature…… (més)

The only biography I've read about Byron, so I can't make comparisons. For my own purposes, it was thoroughly enjoyable and readable. The research seemed excellent. MacCarthy's access to John Murray, Publisher's correspondence with Byron appears to have resulted in some fresh light on the man.
The chapters that concern his decisive change of purpose in life, viz. his commitment to support for an independent Greece, and his putting his money and resources to doing so, reveal a thorough determination that his life would not solely be remembered for profligacy and scandal. His dismal death at age thirty-seven, in swampy Missolonghi is as sad now as it was then for his followers.
And what a fantastic swimmer he was!!! (especially given he wore a kind of pantaloons when he did so).… (més)