The novelist, writer, curator and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell has written extensively for museums and galleries, along with art publications as diverse as Frieze and The Burlington Magazine, approaching visual art through its cultural context, the lens of the recent past and prolonged looking.

Bracewell’s art writing focuses on detailed descriptions of works of art, expanding their interpretation to include media, politics, music, poetry and other areas of cultural production. By exploring connections between the visual arts, pop music, modern iconography and subcultures, while appraising the vision and ideas of individual artists, he relates their work to its broader cultural context.

This collection of texts reads like a history of British art (and the UK itself) from the 1950s to the 2010s, featuring artists such as Richard Hamilton, Bridget Riley, Gilbert & George, John Stezaker, Wolfgang Tillmans, Leigh Bowery, Glenn Brown and Damien Hirst. Each essay is accompanied by an illustration selected by Bracewell, and the publication concludes with a body of autobiographical writings.