Because early Italian pictures became my main interest when I was five, I had few real friends of my age in childhood or adolescence: to be precise one. Many of the people who meant most to me were of a much older generation, writes Francis Russell, who grew up to become head of Christies International Old Master Picture Department.

As these friends died, so began, in 1969, the habit of writing to explain to myself what each had meant to me. The resulting affectionate and elegant sketches languished in a box labelled Lost Friends until 2024, when Russell decided to publish them.

The title nods to both Henry James Partial Portraits (1888) and Winston Churchills Great Contemporaries (1937). But whereas Churchill only wrote biographies of famous men, happily Russells subjects include both men and women, some celebrated, others not. And in place of literary criticism, we have a whos who of the post-war art world, ranging from painters to patrons.

The closer the friendship, or the longer that it endured, the more impossible it is to do even approximate justice, Russell acknowledges. But each pen portrait expresses his indebtedness for a life that has been so greatly enriched by so many friends.