Carel Weight, the inimitable painter of London life and landscape, was my godfather. I remember a clownish-faced elderly man with an air of mild quizzical enquiry, who for 16 years held one of the most important teaching jobs in Britain. In charge of painting at the Royal College of Art when David Hockney passed through, Weight taught the ‘Pop People’ (as he called them) – Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield and R.B. Kitaj – as well as Bridget Riley, Leon Kossoff, John Bellany and the singer-songwriter Ian Dury. Weight himself never received the critical recognition he deserved. He was overshadowed to a degree by abstract expressionism, which crash-landed from the US in the 1950s. His day may yet come. David Bowie was a collector, as was Kenneth Clark, the Civilisation presenter and National Gallery director.

A delightful new memoir, The Worlds of Carel Weight by his close friend Robin Bynoe, exalts an unfairly neglected master. All Weight’s artist associates and Royal College alumni are here, from Francis Bacon, John Minton and Olwyn Bowey to the Soho habitué Diana Hills, the long-suffering lover of the kitchen-sink painter John Bratby. Weight’s star pupil for a while was my aunt Maret........

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