Paul Johnson
I don't recall a year in which I have been sent so many bad books to review. One I did enjoy in 1990, but had no opportunitY to notice, was Clive Aslet's The American Country House (Yale, £22.50), which has the great merit of making you want to set off immediately to visit the places he describes. I was particularly struck by his account of Olana, the house on the hilltop overlooking the Hudson built by Frederick Edwin Church, my favourite landscape painter. I have also been enjoying Jennifer Montagu's magnificent and authoritative Alessandro Algardi (2 vols., £105), though strictly speaking it was published in 1985. This is also from Yale, now the best publisher of art books outside Italy. Final- ly, I strongly recommend Malcolm Mac- Donald's Brahms (£25), a solidly- researched, sensitive and original contribu- tion to Dent's admirable 'Master Musi- cians' series.
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