Outsider: Always Almost: Never Quite - Softcover

Brian Sewell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0704372673 ISBN 13: 9780704372672

Publisher: Quartet Books, 2012

Synopsis

Listed in the Sunday Times 'Books of the Year' and Daily Mail 'Biographies for Christmas 2011', Outsider is the life of a child, boy, adolescent, student and young man in London between the Great Depression of the 30s and the sudden prosperity and social changes of the 60s, affected by the moral attitudes of the day, by the Blitz, post-war austerity and the new freedoms of the later 50s that were resisted with such obstinacy by the old regime. It is about education in the almost forgotten sense of the pursuit of learning for its own sake. It is about the imposed experiences of school and National Service and the chosen experience of being a student at the Courtauld Institute under Johannes Wilde and Anthony Blunt. It is about sex, pre-pubertal, in adolescence and in early adulthood, and the price to be paid for it. It is about art and the art market in the turbulent years of its change from the pursuit of well-connected gentleman to the professional occupation of experts.

About this title

Review:

'One of the most striking books of the year' --Mark Lawson, BBC Radio 4's FrontRow

'Surely the funniest art critic of our time' --Spectator

'This book records an extraordinary life and will, I hope, soon be continued' --Lynn Barber, Sunday Times

About the Author:

Addicted to art, Brian Sewell has been the art critic of the London Evening Standard since 1984 - the sad end of a once promising career, the Orwell, Hawthornden and other prizes scant consolation to a man who once enjoyed life as a scholar gypsy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Quartet Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0704372673
• ISBN 13: 9780704372672
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344