A. S. Byatt

Prologue Post-Impressionism: Royal Academy of Arts, London 1980 He signed the Friends' Book in his elegant handwriting: Alexander Wedderburn, January 22nd, 1980. She had said, peremptory as always, that he was to go straight to Room III, where 'the miraculous stuff was to be found. Early. So...

acknowledgements Acknowledgements are due to the following for permission to quote copyright material: The Coop UTOPIA S.R.L., Rome, for an extract from an essay by Silvia Vegetti Finzi entitled 'Melusina, MaUa e Fobia del Femminile' (used here in translation) in Melusina. Mito e Leggende di Una...

It might begin:The thrush has his anvil or altar on one fallen stone in a heap, gold and grey, roughly squared and shaped, hot in the sun and mossy in the shade. The massive rubble is in a clearing on a high hill. Below is the canopy of the forest. There is a spring, of course, and a litde river...