The Lives of Lucian Freud: YOUTH 1922 – 1968
- Author William Feaver
- Narrator Jonathan Keeble
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 17 October 2019
- Run Time 24 hours and 45 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Biography: arts and entertainment, Biography: general.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents The Lives of Lucian Freud: YOUTH 1922–1968 by William Feaver, read by Jonathan Keeble.
SELECTED AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019
‘This exceptional book is far from standard biography … A compendium of high-grade gossip about everyone from Princess Margaret to the Krays, a tour of the immediate post-war art world, a snapshot of grimy London and a narrative of Freud’s career and rackety life and loves … Leaves the reader itchy for volume two’ SUNDAY TIMES, ART BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘Brilliant … Freud would have approved’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Sparkling’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Superlative … packed with stories’ GUARDIAN
‘Brilliant and compendious ... It does justice to Lucian’ FRANK AUERBACH
'A tremendous read. Anyone interested in British art needs it' ANDREW MARR, NEW STATESMAN
Though 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, shot through with Freud’s own words.
In Youth, the first of two volumes, 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 before being dropped into successive English public schools. 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.
An account of a century told through one of its most important artists, The Lives of Lucian Freud is a landmark in the story its subject and in the art of biography itself.
SELECTED AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND SPECTATOR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019
‘This exceptional book is far from standard biography … A compendium of high-grade gossip about everyone from Princess Margaret to the Krays, a tour of the immediate post-war art world, a snapshot of grimy London and a narrative of Freud’s career and rackety life and loves … Leaves the reader itchy for volume two’ SUNDAY TIMES, ART BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘Brilliant … Freud would have approved’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Sparkling’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Superlative … packed with stories’ GUARDIAN
‘Brilliant and compendious ... It does justice to Lucian’ FRANK AUERBACH
'A tremendous read. Anyone interested in British art needs it' ANDREW MARR, NEW STATESMAN
Though 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, shot through with Freud’s own words.
In Youth, the first of two volumes, 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 before being dropped into successive English public schools. 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.
An account of a century told through one of its most important artists, The Lives of Lucian Freud is a landmark in the story its subject and in the art of biography itself.
Critics Review
William Feaver has done a brilliant job
Affectionate as well as lively, also hard-edged, clear-eyed, as Freud would have relished. Much is recounted in the artist’s own sardonic words, buoyed by fantastic gossip; it flows fast and long, and you close it reluctantly
This exceptional book is far from standard biography … A compendium of high-grade gossip about everyone from Princess Margaret to the Krays, a tour of the immediate post-war art world, a snapshot of grimy London and a narrative of Freud’s career and rackety life and loves … Leaves the ready itchy for volume two
Here’s a story to keep you stuck in that fireside seat … Follow the adrenaline-fuelled course of the first half of his fabulously unconventional, unscrupulously promiscuous, relentlessly ambitious and often fantastically scurrilous life as he swirls about in a milieu of grand society and riveting gossip. The second half of this biography is expected soon, so that’s next Christmas sorted
An exceptional level of fact… a robust and intricate evocation of the man at work
The “reptile Freud” is laid bare in a biography that reads like fiction as it charts the painter’s wild, dangerous youth
This is far from a standard biography. At times like a Jilly Cooper novel, at others a socio-economic spotlight on the times
A superb and engrossing book
This is a tremendous read. Anyone interested in British art needs it … An extraordinary book
The amoral antics of the painter, as reckless in life as he was fastidious in the studio, mesmerise in this lively account
Superb, sparklingly intelligent
As gripping as any novel, illuminating both about Freud’s work and about his fairly startling personal life
The pleasure of this book is infernal
Irresistible … Freud and Feaver seize you by the elbows, bundle you into a Bentley, haul you round the nightclubs, feed you oysters, Guinness and amphetamines and order you Russian tea and eggs the next morning. I didn’t know whether I’d been roughed up or ravished
Not just a great art biography, but wonderful social commentary about London in particular and Britain in general in the postwar period
A biography that is as entertaining, and full of twists and turns, as a picaresque novel … It has amazing zip and gusto, and leaves you wanting more
Sparkling … An extraordinary tranche of anecdote and apercu … Feaver’s wonderful biography comes close to Freud’s own definition of his art: “A picture should be a recreation of an event rather than an illustration of an object”
Superlative … Every page of this volume affirms his distinction … This is Lucian Freudian biography, packed with stories
While he has … filled his book to the brim with the excitement and strangeness of Freud’s life, he sees him as painter rather than playboy … He uses his extensive interviews with Freud subtly and judiciously … the paintings hold their strength, their mystery, their distance. Freud, too, in Feaver’s version, maintains his own strength, his mystery, his distance. His biographer makes no effort to delve into his inner being and explain his work accordingly. Freud’s outer being gives him more than enough to go on
Rich in gossip and written with effortless style
Lucian Freud was unique; unique in intensity, in affection, in interest and in fun. This brilliant and compendious biography has the same qualities. It does justice to Lucian
Mesmerising, almost surreal in its headlong layering of detail, memory and gossip. Propelled by Freud's sardonic recollections, and lit throughout by William Feaver's impeccable, penetrating analysis of the work, this is a monstrously brilliant portrait
In William Feaver’s The Lives of Lucian Freud, based upon decades of conversation with the painter, we hear Freud’s remarkable voice on almost every page. The result is a vivid, intimate biography of one of the 20th century’s most storied artists
Here, Freud gets to tell his version of events with panache
Sensational … Rich with gossip and stories
A rich and elaborate biography
A fascinatingly hybrid form of biography … An epic cultural history, seen through the prism of someone hypnotically fascinating in real life
One of the most intimate biographies of an artist ever written … Full of pithy observations, with just enough historical and social background to open up individual paintings and drawings to analysis … A delight
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