"A masterpiece, a major work of modern art history." --Wall Street Journal

"Absorbing and lavishly illustrated." --New Yorker

"If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it. You soon will be." --Financial Times

Martin Gayford is a writer and art critic. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud; Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters; A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen and Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy, both with David Hockney; Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now, with Antony Gormley; Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939-1954, with David Dawson; and Venice: City of Pictures.