This novel, says DM
, was inspired by a sub-Vermeer domestic-interior painting of 1660 which she bought at auction. The book was to be filmed in 2004 with a script by Tom Stoppard
...
Literary responses
Alison Uttley
This book pleased some prestigious critics. Although the New Statesman was rather sniffy and the New English Weekly hostile, Margery Allingham
in Time and Tide called it enchanting. Humbert Wolfe
in the Observer said...
Textual Production
Mary McCarthy
She first started to muse on and explore these ideas after the theft of Vermeer
's painting Young Lady with a Guitar by Irish terrorists during the winter of 1974. She was fascinated by the...
