Nicolas Bentley drew the pictures Book

PRELUDE:
Attending four Coffee Table lectures at the moment at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (ie. AGNSW)on the subject:
"The Body In Art And Medicine."

Part of Lecture One were the illegal dissections carried out by Leonardo da Vinci and later his junior by 20 years, Michelangelo Buonarotti.
Alas, in these times "the resurrection of the body (was) an inviolable belief which preclude(d) any dissection."
It was thus the custom to dissect animals and then cogitate one's way to the human. This Galen had done over a thousand years before.
And NOTHING had changed.
No first hand observation.
Eventually the Renaissance and later, the Enlightenment would take care of this problem.
Leonardo was an early sower of their Seeds and a Chief Initiator of the New Attitudes.

TO THE BOOK:
This part of the lecture put me in mind of a wonderful gift from a wonderful friend,an illustrated text, not yet fully exploited.
So now I have begun to read this text of restrained politeness and a simple direct honesty -this being the voice of Leonardo.
The accompanying illustrations however are totally the opposite, being unrestrained flights of the imagination, inspired and magnificent.
It is ALL raucous, anarchic, exquisite and very moving, reflecting a world of outrageous cruelty, prejudice and piety,superstition, beauty and barbarity.
This is ALL the miraculous imagination and ferocious talent of Ralph Steadman, the author and illustrator.

I'M HAVING A BALL !!!!!!!