Still Life: The instant Sunday Times bestseller and BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick

Art and life intertwined.

Those little moments that nobody else notices. Little sacred moments of the everyday.

room. And there I stood, between the graveyard of glasses, and the wilting nubs of candles.

‘Life’s what you make it,

A little over a month before, they’d driven up to Orvieto, a city built on a huge rock overlooking the Paglia Valley. They’d sat on the bonnet of the jeep and drunk red wine out of their canteens as bombers roared overhead towards Mount Cetona, the boundary of Tuscany. They’d stumbled into the cathedral, into the San Brizio chapel, where Luca Signo

‘Luce intellettual, piena d’amore.’ What’s that mean, sir? Light of the mind, full of love.

Had grounded them and introduced them to a way of life they would aspire to and return to.

But always the value for me will be response. How it moves one.

All the symbolism and the paradox, ours to interpret. That’s how it becomes part of us. And as counterpoint to our suffering, we have beauty. We like beauty, don’t we? Something good on the eye cheers us. Does something to us on a cellular level, makes us feel alive and enriched. Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It