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My guest on Great Lives is Brian Sewell, art critic for the London Evening Standard.

He's just published his autobiography.

Outsider, always almost, never quite. Brian, tell us whom you've chosen as your great life and

how and why you first came to be involved in his story.

Well I've chosen Ludwig or fondly known as Mad Ludwig of Bavaria.

Who was the king of Bavaria in Germany was still in bits and pieces.

He had a building mania and he built the most beautiful

and fantastic wonderful buildings. He was almost certainly queer. He was a Roman Catholic

and much troubled by Catholic doubts, he was

protonically in love with Wagner.

Brian you may not be mad but Catholic, queer in love with Wagner there do seem to be

points of intersection here. There are points of intersection and the direct point of

intersection with Ludwig occurred in I think 1963 or 64

and I was I've been in Vienna for a while.

I had a wonderful cream and red daimler sports at the time and coming back to London I was

an Italian friend called Claudia and Claudia said look we had the map and said look

Kimseo Kimse and I said what's that and he said Ludwig so we drove into the village

Kimseo which is on the lake, and find somewhere to stare.

The following morning, the lake was covered with mist.

You could see above the mist, a perfect kaspadawi tree-drich thing. And I said, well, let's go and look at the

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