The Chapel is on Fire Book

Sir Michael Levey joined the staff of the National Gallery in London in 1951 and from 1973 to 1986, he was the Director of the Gallery. He has previously published scholarly books on the history of art, but now he has written a highly original and enchanting memoir. Much of Levey's attention is focused upon the strange and wonderful world of childhood. As he asserts early on, "I believe that there is nothing inherently "ordinary" in the often prolonged process of growing from a child into an adult." He backs up his argument with some extraordinarily vividly remembered vignettes, especially those to do with his Roman Catholic upbringing. His parents, particularly his father, were strict Catholics, and before long, Levey began to drift away from his father's faith. This sets up the kind of opposition, between kindly but stern and doctrinaire parent, and imaginative, tearaway child, that one finds repeated in various minor classics, from Edmund Gosse's Father and Son to Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Levey seems set fair to join this genre. Later years take him into the army, "fertile in situations improbable and absurd," and finally to the National Gallery; but it his eye for childhood that really distinguishes this remarkable book.--Christopher HartRead More