Breakfast at Sotheby&s is a wry intimate truly revealing exploration of how art acquires its financial value from Philip Hook a senior director at Sotheby&s& Reading it is like participating in a hugely enjoyable personal tutorial given by a cultured witty clear-eyed world teacher with a fully functioning sense of humour A real delight&
- Spectator & Hook&s view of the art world is that of the professional auctioneer In an A-Z format it is an entire art education contained in under 350 pages Wry dry & completely beguiling&
- William Boyd Guardian Books of the Year & How to nail the mad bad crazy contemporary art world in print? Sotheby&s senior director Hook draws on 35 years& experience in this informal memoir He unravels with humour piquancy & erudition what drives the economics of taste&
- Financial Times Books of the Year & It&s very hard to write an amusing book about art that has some serious things to say But Philip Hook has done it&
- Sunday Times Books of the Year & An auctioneer&s alphabet of quirky reflections & off-beat lists such as &middle-brow artists& & &fictional artists& an ideal volume for the art-lover&s bedside&
- Martin Gayford Spectator Books of the Year & His delightful Breakfast at Sotheby&s is a house sale of a book a chance for him to clear out 35 years of memories as an art dealer & auctioneer first at Christie&s & then Sotheby&s a rival auction house&
- Economist Philip Hook is a director & senior paintings specialist at Sotheby&s He has worked in the art world for thirty-five years during which time he has also been a director of Christie&s & an international art dealer He is the author of five novels & two works of art history including The Ultimate Trophy a history of the Impressionist Painting Hook has appeared regularly on television from 1978-2003 on the BBC&s Antiques Roadshow