| Guardian Obituaries | ||
| Evelyn Williams The Guardian |
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| The artist and writer Lionel Miskin, who has died aged 81, appeared at St Martins in 1943 dressed in Air Force uniform, a red scarf slung nonchalantly round his neck, bringing glamour into a wartime art school. | ||
| He was the gentlest, funniest, most interesting person we had ever met. He would breeze into class, draw a brilliant portrait or two and regale us with tales of "Lionel's war", which included visits to a neutral Dublin where he claimed the restaurants were full of German officers. | ||
| He had been at Cheltenham college with Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert, and when Lindsay made his brilliant film If ... the lead, Malcolm McDowell, was the spitting image of Lionel, Lindsay's life-long friend. | ||
| His home in Mevagissey, with his wife Pru, their three sons and Labrador Picasso, was a focal point in a community of writers and artists. He was a draughtsman of great depth and skill, also a painter, writer (his novel The Pantechnicon was published in 1969), potter, etcher and filmmaker (for the Arts Council). Later he became head of department at Falmouth art school. | ||
| When he later moved to Cyprus to bathe in the warm sea, he produced sumptuous drawings of the landscape there. On returning to England, he and Pru settled in Bovey Tracey, and he continued to work to within a couple of months of his death. | ||
A found memory of Lionel by Martina Weatherley 07  |
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