The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s is the story of interlinking friendships, shared experiences, rivalries, and artistic concerns among a number of acclaimed artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Victor Pasmore, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Patrick Heron, Richard Hamilton, Prunella Clough, Peter Blake, Allen Jones, Frank Bowling and Howard Hodgkin. Drawing on extensive first-hand interviews over 30 years with important witnesses and participants, many previously unpublished, the art critic Martin Gayford teases out the thread connecting these individual lives. His compelling narrative explores how painting thrived in London against the postwar backdrop of Soho bohemia in the 1940s and 1950s and
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