Fascinating subject matter hampered by an annoyingly jocular tone which trivialises the stories.

Each chapter is composed of themed anecdoes from the lives of great artists; there are puns and bad jokes (some of them mercifully obscure to a non-Brit), and the transitions between stories are baldly mechanical. The forced gaity is even more grating when discussing the artists who beat their wives and did other truly despicable things.

I wish this book's editor had sat down with Ms. Connor and told her that she didn't need to apologise for her subject matter or talk down to her reader. It's possible to write a popular history without assuming that your reader has a seventeen-second attention span and needs to be elbowed in the ribs every second paragraph.

For a good popular history, see Ricky Jay's "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women," Tom Holland's "Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic," or Barbara Mertz' recently updated "Temples, Tombs, and Heiroglyphs." ( )