Everett, Peter

(British, 1931–99)

Everett was perhaps best known for his television and radio plays, but his most distinctive achievement lay in novels depicting the lives of artists, exploring their times and the nature of their creativity. His first, Negatives (1964), won the Somerset Maugham award and Matisse's War (1996) received critical acclaim. The novel is an account of Henri Matisse between 1939 and 1945 and is a wonderful evocation of occupied France. In The Voyages of Alfred Wallis (1999), a short but haunting work told through the consciousness of an elderly ‘naïve’ painter in St Ives, Cornwall, there are walk-on roles for admirers such as Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood. Wallis's seafaring memories, religious mania, and visions of his dead wife are brilliantly woven together, and the book has a moving conclusion with Wallis overlooking the harbour, beyond his death. Bellocq's Women (2000) concerns the photographer E. J. Bellocq among his subjects, the prostitutes of New Orleans' Storyville district.

John Fowles, D. M. Thomas  JS