His own life as a work of art

He also grew desperate for another kind of escape as his interest in art grew – escape from the isolation of the Australian art world with what Hughes calls its "image deprivation." London, and then Italy, redressed this imbalance.

But as an Australian abroad it wasn't all plain sailing. For a start, stay-at-home fellow countrymen tended to dismiss expats as somewhat traitorous. But Hughes was not alone. Others such as the broadcaster Clive James and the satirist Barry Humphries were contemporaries who also looked for recognition in Britain.

Among those he met abroad, Hughes describes certain invaluable mentors, in particular, Alan Moorhead, who offered friendship, quiet and timely advice, and – most critically – exemplified a writer's necessary professionalism.

But there were the less fortunate encounters as well. Once Cyril Connolly, a writer whom Hughes admired enormously, snubbed him mercilessly. It happened at a Tate Gallery exhibit, when Hughes finally summoned enough courage to approach Connolly and thank him for a book of his that had encouraged Hughes to leave Australia.

Hughes's speech "took rather a long time," he recalls, "and by the end of it I caught an icy glint in Connolly's froggy eyes. 'I cannot believe,' he said at last, 'that I am to be held entirely responsible for the accidental effects of my juvenilia in remote colonies.' "

Hughes made enemies as well as friends along the way. He could be every bit as dismissive as Connolly to those he hated (although not to their faces.)

Sadly, one who turned from friend to enemy was his first wife. Hughes is brutally frank about the miseries of this marriage, wrapped up as it was with the promiscuous drug culture of the 1960s. In fact, some of Hughes's most excoriating cultural criticism is aimed at what he sees as the pseudorevolutionary nonsense of the hippy generation.

Hughes is also candid about reporting – and sometimes justifying – the highs and lows of his career. He got (poorly paid) work from the BBC. A publisher or two commissioned him to write art books, one about Australian art, one about heaven and hell in art (which caught the attention of Time's managing editor, Henry Grunwald and led to his being hired there), and one about Leonardo da Vinci. This last, after considerable work, failed to materialize and Hughes explains – in great detail – why it did not.

Leonardo is a vast subject even for a Renaissance scholar (which Hughes was not). In addition, Hughes found him cold and unsympathetic, an impossible subject for a writer impelled more by strong feeling than intellectual interest.

The strength of Hughes's writing when stoked by passion was demonstrated again recently by his excellent 2004 book on Goya. But if it requires further proof, this memoir should provide ample confirmation.

• Christopher Andreae has been writing on arts for the Monitor since the 1960s. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

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