A long-time admirer of the books and pictures of Wyndham Lewis, I was determined to be present at a talk given about him in Oxford last week by his biographer Paul Edwards. This proved a fascinating evening during which, in addition to learning more about Lewis, I had chance to browse among the many excellent books on the shelves of the Albion Beatnik, in Walton Street, and meet its owner, Dennis Harrison.

Paul (pictured above), who teaches English at Bath Spa University College, has been a Lewis fan since childhood. While happy to list some of the many achievements of this remarkable man, as painter, pampleteer, novelist, satirist and critic — not to mention as founder of the pre-First World War Vorticist movement in art — he did not spare us the darker side of the man. Early enthusiasm for fascism, whose faults he later came to see, was part of it.

The talk sent me back to Paul’s excellent biography, Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer, which was published by Yale University Press in 2000. This is ideal reading (with wonderful illustrations) for anyone planning a visit to a forthcoming exhibition at Tate Modern destined to put Lewis firmly in the spotlight again. The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, from June 14 to September 4, will feature 100 key works, including photography and literary ephemera, as well as pieces by Lewis, Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

Paul was guest curator of a major Lewis retrospective held last year at Fundacion Juan March, in Madrid. The foundation’s director of exhibitions, Manuel Fontån del Junco, will be in Oxford next Friday (April 8) for an Oxford Literary Festival discussion (noon, Corpus Christi College) with the Ashmolean Museum’s director, Dr Christopher Brown. One for the diary . . .