An art historical study by Martin Gayford (b. 1952), the author of collections of interviews with David Hockney and Lucian Freud, books on British art, Van Gogh and Michelangelo, is devoted to London painting of the 1950s-1970s, which intricately intertwined the innovations of Pop Art with its obsession with the mass culture of a consumer society, an existentially oriented neo-expressionism and a traditional English interest in colorful matter. The work of the leading British artists of this period - Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, R.B. Kitaj, David Hockney and others - is considered by the author in the context of aesthetic searches and the stormy bohemian life of Swinging London. The book is written based on conversations Gayford had with most of the artists he covers; numerous excerpts from these conversations immerse the reader in the atmosphere of British art of the recent past.