James Birch – författare

'A rollicking cultural adventure... fascinating and true' Grayson PerryThis funny and personal memoir is the account of an audacious attempt by James Birch, a young British curator, to mount the ground-breaking retrospective of Francis Bacon's work at the newly refurbished Central House of Artists, Moscow in 1988. Side-lined by the British establishment, Birch found himself at the heart of a honey-trap and the focus for a picaresque cast of Soviet officials, attaches and politicians under the forbidding eye of the KGB as he attempted to bring an unseen western cultural icon to Russia during the time of 'Glasnost', just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.Bacon in Moscow is the story of the evolution of an exhibition that was at the artistic and political heart of a sea of change that culminated with the fall of the USSR. 'A rollicking cultural adventure before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the meteoric rise of contemporary art in the nineties' Grayson Perry

'A rollicking cultural adventure... fascinating and true' Grayson PerryThis funny and personal memoir is the account of an audacious attempt by James Birch, a young British curator, to mount the ground-breaking retrospective of Francis Bacon's work at the newly refurbished Central House of Artists, Moscow in 1988. Side-lined by the British establishment, Birch found himself at the heart of a honey-trap and the focus for a picaresque cast of Soviet officials, attaches and politicians under the forbidding eye of the KGB as he attempted to bring an unseen western cultural icon to Russia during the time of 'Glasnost', just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.Bacon in Moscow is the story of the evolution of an exhibition that was at the artistic and political heart of a sea of change that culminated with the fall of the USSR. 'A rollicking cultural adventure before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the meteoric rise of contemporary art in the nineties' Grayson Perry

The much-anticipated sequel to Bacon in Moscow, Gilbert & George and the Communists charts daring art dealer James Birch's next implausible transcultural mission: introducing British art's most subversive duo to not only the creaking remnants of Soviet Russia, but to the steely frontier of a Maoist China well on its way to becoming a global superpower.Gilbert & George and the Communists is more than just a picaresque and deeply funny riot through art history: it is a first-hand account of how, just as one global giant died, another was born.

James Birch has been a promoter of modern art for over thirty years and boasts a resume of exhibitions both throughout the UK and internationally. The first gallerist to show works by Grayson Perry and the neo-naturists, James was also a close friend of Francis Bacon, Gilbert & George, Denis Wirth-Miller and Genesis P-Orridge. Written with the journalist Michael Hodges – whose work has appeared in the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, the New Statesman and Esquire – Gilbert & George and the Communists is more than just a picaresque and deeply funny riot through art history: it is an account of a world unthinkably different to – and ever-present in - our own today.