RaveThe Financial TimesIt is an exciting story. This is not a book about plasticity, or tactile values, or the merits of one medium (acrylic, say) over another (oil paint, say). There are the necessary paragraphs about philosophical issues like the relation of draughtsmanship to painting or issues posed by Hockney’s fascination with what EH Gombrich called \'the art of illusion.\' But these are never allowed to slow down the narrative. If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it. You soon will be. This is not a picture book with commentary. The images are there for the text ... Gayford’s eye for the dramatic, his novelist’s approach, feasts upon events and stories ... Gayford carefully avoids an elegiac note ... Yet it is difficult for the contemporary reader not to sing a lament for the makers ... His driving account of a miraculous time in British art may well prove its memorial.
