Paul Muratov was a Russian essayist, novelist, art historian, critic and playwright.

After 1918 he was associated with the only bookshop in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 which remained unregulated by the state - the Writer's Library. Having been banished in 1922, he spent the 1920s in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 where he became part of the emigré community which is evoked in Nina Berberova

Nina Berberova

Nina Nikolayevna Berberova was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of Russian exiles in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia and died in Philadelphia.-Biographical Sketch:...

's The Italics are Mine - " the best single book written about Russian culture in exile." By the 1930s he had moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 - during the late 1920s and early 1930s he brought out several books in French, including ones on Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico , born Guido di Pietro, was an Early Italian Renaissance painter described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent"...

 and Russian icons

Russian icons

The use and making of icons entered Kievan Rus' following its conversion to Orthodox Christianity in 988 AD. As a general rule, these icons strictly followed models and formulas hallowed by Byzantine art, led from the capital in Constantinople...

. During the Second World War he was in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, working as a military journalist ; he wrote an account of the Russian campaigns for Penguin Books

Penguin Books

Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

.

Clive James

Clive James

Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...

 has called Muratov an example of " just how brilliant somebody can be and still be a forgotten man," and called his book Obrazy italii, (The Forms of Italy), written before the First World war, " one of the most dazzling books of its type ever written. As a book on the Italian Grand Tour it not only stands directly in the tradition of Goethe, Gregorovius, Burckhardt

Jacob Burckhardt

Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt was a historian of art and culture, and an influential figure in the historiography of each field. He is known as one of the major progenitors of cultural history, albeit in a form very different from how cultural history is conceived and studied in academia today...

 and Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...

, but it is better than any of them."