SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019SELECTED AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR‘A compendium of high-grade gossip about everyone from Princess Margaret to the Krays, a snapshot of grimy London and a narrative of Freud’s career and rackety life and loves … Leaves the reader itching for more’ SUNDAY TIMES, ART BOOK OF THE YEARThough ferociously private, Lucian Freud spoke every week for decades to his close confidante and collaborator William Feaver – about painting and the art world, but also about his life and loves. The result is this a unique, electrifying biography.In Youth, Feaver conjures Freud’s early childhood: Sigmund Freud’s grandson, born into a middle-class Jewish family in Weimar Berlin, escaping Nazi Germany in 1934. Following Freud through art school, his time in the Navy during the war, his post-war adventures in Paris and Greece, and his return to Soho – consorting with duchesses and violent criminals, out on the town with Greta Garbo and Princess Margaret – Feaver traces a brilliant, difficult young man’s coming of age.‘Brilliant … Freud would have approved’ DAILY TELEGRAPH‘Superlative … packed with stories’ GUARDIAN'Anyone interested in British art needs it' ANDREW MARR, NEW STATESMAN
