Rencontre with Maylis Besserie

A little-known yet central figure in Francis Bacon's life, Jessie Lightfoot was the woman who protected him from his tyrant of a father during his childhood and from his own worst excesses in his early days in London. The tenderness of this Cornish nanny adds new colour to the painter's sulphurous palette. As well as the humour and wit of this extraordinary woman negotiating the underworld of artists, Maylis Besserie also gives us a glimpse of Ireland in the first half of the 20th century, both a powder keg and remarkable island whose landscapes, scenery and animals haunted Bacon's paintings. After ‘Le tiers temps’, dedicated to Beckett, winner of the Goncourt prize for first novel in 2020 and translated into fifteen languages, and ‘Les amours dispersées’, dedicated to W.B. Yeats, Maylis brings her Irish trilogy to a close with ‘La Nourrice de Francis Bacon’ (Gallimard), another delicate exploration of great Irish literary and artistic figures.