Francis Bacon in Your Blood

By: Michael Peppiatt

Narrated by: Michael Peppiatt

It is a story I have been wanting to write for a long time, telling it as it really was before that whole world that I shared with Francis vanishes....

Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine he was editing. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death 30 years later.

Fascinated by the artist's brilliance and charisma, Peppiatt accompanied him on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club and casino, seeing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life' and meeting everybody around him, from Lucian Freud and Sonia Orwell to East End thugs; from predatory homosexuals to Andy Warhol and the Duke of Devonshire. He also frequently discussed painting with Bacon in his studio, where only the artist's closest friends were ever admitted. The Soho photographer, John Deakin, who introduced the young student to the famous artist, called Peppiatt 'Bacon's Boswell'.

Despite the chaos Bacon created around him Peppiatt managed to record scores of their conversations ranging over every aspect of life and art, love and death, the revelatory and hilarious as well as the poignantly tragic.

Gradually Bacon became a kind of father figure for Peppiatt, and the two men's lives grew closely intertwined. In this intimate and deliberately indiscreet account, Bacon is shown close-up, grand and petty, tender and treacherous by turn, and often quite unlike the myth that has grown up around him. This is a speaking portrait, a living likeness, of the defining artist of our times.

©2015 Michael Peppiatt (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

Falling in love again

This book is gossipy, funny, loving and insightful. It is clearly a love not from one dear friend to another. A book to cherish and revisit. My only note would be that for this, the audible version a bit of Francis’s own repetition(s) could have been edited down without maiming the essential story. What an extraordinary human.

Lush, funny, brilliantly written

I did not realize until I went to write this review that the author read the book. His voice is exquisite, perfect for this book. The story is extraordinary and made want to be there—minus the drinking, not that I don't drink, just not like that. Remarkable book. Great book about a great man and his friend, the author.

Fascinating Life of Francis Bacon

This audiobook is read by the author, and he is a fantastic reader. The book is part memoir for the author, and part biography of Francis Bacon. If you are interested in modern painting, this is a wonderful window into an important artist’s life which otherwise you have to piece together for yourself. Bacon had an enormous personality, and anecdotes about his behavior and even the way he spoke were absolutely fascinating. One of the best artist biographies I’ve encountered. Up there with Richardson’s Life of Picasso and Kusama’s autobiography Infinity Net.

Love and horror

The writing took my breath away in places. The listener found herself carousing with Francis Bacon, almost tasting the wine and listening to the brilliant snippets of philosophy and the perspective on art and life that Bacon shared with Peppiatt over the years of their friendship. Your are at times gripped with love for the man and sometimes shock and horror and repulsion.

Captivating

I truly enjoyed the authors telling of his own life along side Francis Bacon's. Funny and captivating.