The “reptile Freud” is laid bare in a biography that reads like fiction as it charts the painter's wild, dangerous youth

The Times, Books of the Year

As entertaining, and full of twists and turns, as a picaresque novel … Its amazing zip and gusto leaves you wanting more

CRAIG BROWN, Mail on Sunday

William Feaver has done a brilliant job

LYNN BARBER, Daily Telegraph

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

Financial Times, Books of the Year

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

Sunday Times, Art Book of the Year

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

The Times, Picks of the Year