John Richardson´s riveting memoir about growing up in England and, at twenty-five, beginning his twelve-year adventure with the controversial art collector Douglas Cooper. With a new introduction by Jed Perl, here is John Richardson´s richly entertaining memoir of his life with the brilliant but difficult British art expert Douglas Cooper--a fiendish, colorful, Evelyn Waugh-like figure who single-handedly assembled the world´s most important private collection of Cubist paintings. John Richardson tells the story of their ill-fated but comical association, which began in London in 1949 when Richardson was twenty-five and moved onto the Château de Castille, the famous colonnaded folly in Provence that they restored and filled with masterpieces by Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Juan Gris. Richardson unfurls a fascinating adventure through twelve years, encompassing famous artists and writers, collectors and other celebrities--Francis Bacon, Jean Cocteau, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Dora Maar, Peggy Guggenheim, and Henri Matisse, to name only a few. And central to the book is Richardson´s close friendship with Picasso, which coincided with the emergence of the artist´s new mistress, Jacqueline Roque, and gave Richardson an inside view of the repercussions she would have on Picasso´s life and work. With an eye for detail, an ear for scandal, and a sparkling narrative style, Richardson has written a unique, fast-paced saga of modernism behind the scenes.