This 1997 revised & updated biography of the celebrated artist using the mass of new material which has come to light since Holroyd's two-volume first edition in the mid 1970s reveals the complete story of John & his circle from one of our great biographers. John studied at the Slade with his sister Gwen before both of them went to Paris. He lived & worked at feverish speed & his drawings were astonishing for their fluid lyrical line their vigor & spontaneity. His life became a complex tale of two cities London & Paris of two wives & many families. ' The age of Augustus John was dawning ' Virginia Woolf wrote of the year 1908 which saw many portraits of writers & artists & small glowing oil panels of figures in a landscape. His most striking work was done in the years before the First World War & when he died in 1961 his death was treated as a landmark signaling the end of a distant era.