'...the painter and writer Celia Paul has contributed Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice (2026), her extraordinary memoir about living for a short time in Dorsoduro after the death of her husband. The worst writing about Venice is by those who are overly astonished by its beauty. Paul, while she certainly admires her surroundings, never succumbs to the narrative grift of over-description; instead, she writes plainly about the claustrophobia and discomforts of a city which she aptly compares to a brain. Its neural pathways, its canals, repeatedly return her to earlier scenes of loss, broken heartedness and the great art which has taught her so much about the human condition. This is Venice correctly seen – not for the picturesque, but the personal.' — Andrew Durbin
Image: Book cover, Celia Paul, Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice, 2026
Courtesy Jonathan Cape (Penguin Books)
