Francis Bacon In Your Blood: A Memoir - Hardcover

Michael Peppiatt takes us on an intoxicating tour of the painter's louchest, and most productive, years (Susie Rushton Vogue 2015-09-01)

This fine portrait of the artist is both gossipy and poignant . [and] one of the best art books I have read, by turns atmospheric and waspishly gossipy but also profound and poignant. (Michael Prodger The Times 2015-08-29)

A vivid new memoir by the artist's protégé is set to be a classic . highly entertaining . the narrative comes hurtling off the page with a palpable sense of release and apparently guileless, even artless, candour.The cavalcade of bohemian celebrities goes on and on . captivating...a classic, not only of art writing, but of personal memoir (Sunday Telegraph 2015-08-30)

Peppiatt offers a window into the experiences and emotional intelligence of this great artist (New Statesman 2015-08-21)

An affecting personal narrative about his friendship with the great painter (Publisher's Weekly 2015-07-27)

Peppiatt shows a deft hand in crafting an enthralling, delightful story of two very different men (Kirkus)

A remarkable book ... it captures what it was like to be in the presence of this brilliant, camp, reckless, waspish, drunken, generous, shameless character. Michael Peppiatt brings him back to life and somehow carries off the near-impossible trick of echoing the repetitive nature of his drunken talk ... while somehow preserving his electricity and effervescence (Craig Brown Mail on Sunday 2015-08-30)

Every page is fresh, immediate, and flashing with glimpses into Bacon's complicated psyche and Peppiatt's own conundrums. While Peppiatt still struggles to understand the "deep-seated masochism" that covertly shaped Bacon's dramatic life and ferocious art, he celebrates with ever-replenished wonder the timeless artist's creativity, "freedom and energy and total individuality." (Donna Seaman Booklist 2015-08-01)

Francis Bacon's views on art, death and his bohemian circle make revealing reading in this enjoyable memoir (Independent 2015-08-29)

Francis Bacon in Your Blood is not a biography of Bacon, nor is meant to be: it is a memoir of the life that ensued when the 53-year-old Bacon befriended Peppiatt, then aged 21 . The perspective Peppiatt gradually gains is crucial. Beneath the bluster, dissimulation, megalomaniacal kindness and "maniacally controlling way", Bacon's "living brilliantly" his "gilded gutter life", is revealed to be a sustaining fiction for a talented, broken man . Peppiatt undercuts just enough to be heartbreaking rather than destructive . It's a brilliant portrait that Peppiatt lets Bacon paint . Entertaining, calculated and acerbic, Michael Peppiatt really does seem to have a bit of Bacon in his blood (Spectator 2015-09-05)