David Watkin’s first love was books. He had a most incredible library.
In 1989 when I first came to Brighton from antiquarian Norwich I little expected to find an equivalent to Thomas Crowe, or the Scientific Anglian. But to have the shops of Colin Page and Holleyman and Treacher within a minute’s walk of each other was exhilarating. Rather than join my Art School colleagues in...
David Watkin was a dedicated collector of books. He bought carefully but knowledgeably from the main dealers in Britain and the US, in person or by catalogue. Even when he feared poverty in his later years (never with much conviction) I saw him contemplating catalogue items such as the Complete Plays of Vanbrugh for...
For a man who earned his living through images, David Watkin was astonishingly confident with the written word, reading and writing and declaiming. At various stages of our friendship I remember his completing Thomas Mallory, Proust and The Faerie Queen. He took particular delight in Shakespeare’s plays and mined deeply within the two volume...
We’d gone to the Apocalypse Exhibition at the Royal Academy – DW guffawing his way around The Chapman Brother’s ‘Hell‘. Afterwards he took us to visit his chums at Maggs… where a complete tour of the building ensued, courtesy of Mister Maggs, with Jozef taking the following snaps. Maggs Rare Books
Some quotes, taken from literally, worlds apart: Jim Ballentyne “This is an exercise in self-publishing, the handsomest I have ever come across. Many a commercial publisher should sit down with it. The design of the whole book, from dust jacket (lovely picture of the author at work!) through page layout to binding is...