Who was the mysterious Madame de Mentou? And how did she become such an expert teacher in many different art forms? These are the questions which the writer Thomas Fenman addresses in a brief memoir which was written a few months before his death. Fenman’s puzzling memoir is now published for the first time; Michael Allen provides a scholarly introduction.
Please be aware that a fascinating new interpretation of Mr Fenman’s memoir has recently been published in a review article by Professor R. Gowan Haverges. This review appears in Underneath the Bunker, ‘Europe’s premier cultural journal’. Professor Haverges offers a fascinating hypothesis which explains many of the more puzzling aspects of Fenman’s work. It is suggested, however, that readers should delay reading Haverges’s elucidation until after they have read the memoir, in order to form their own opinions first.
