I'm still reading Earth and Heaven and artist Walter Cox is still at the Slade School of Art in the aftermath of World War I.

Sue Gee is such an accomplished writer that I can see his drawings, smell the seedy student lodgings in Camden, and feel as if I'm walking sooty London streets in the spring of 1920.

And thanks to YouTube I can listen to the soundtrack.

If I were Sue Gee, I'd be steaming mad about this truly dreadful cover illustration ...

Does that convey to you the world of Henry Tonks, Christopher Nevinson, Paul Nash, Philip Wilson Steer?

Yeah, thought it would ...

But I liked the woodcut illustrations inside (by Simon Brett, although I had to search the small print to find a credit).

Perhaps I posted this too early. Two days later, my interest in the characters is flagging and I've guessed the predictable ending. I'm still fascinated by the background of art between the wars but less so by the relationships which make this too much of a 'women's read' for me. Far preferred Sue Gee's later book The Mysteries of Glass. Or Francesca Kay's wonderful novel An Equal Stillness about a woman artist, written so convincingly that you'd almost start searching for her paintings in the Tate.