Exhibition : A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

Author: Hyde, Alex

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 2 July 2026 by GRANTA BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

The must-read art world novel of the summer:

a story of love, ego and destruction, and the dark relationship between authenticity and celebrity, artist and muse.

London. 1990s. Amid the heady rebellion of Young British Artists, Rabble Stone, a photographer, meets the artist, a painter, after renting a room in her Brixton home. Soon Rabble is in thrall to this new world: to the run-down glamour of the Victorian house; to the exhilarating and debauched gallery openings, and to those in the artist's orbit, beautiful and lost. Above all, she is drawn to her new friend's work; raw, unfiltered self-portraits of startling intimacy, which Rabble captures in her uncompromising photographs. But as Rabble's longing tips into obsession, her pursuit of the artist - her fame, her wealth, her life - threatens to consume her...

'Sharp, vivid, compelling: a love letter to the last identifiable scene in British Art that captures the energy, grit and luxury and hunger of 90s London' - Lizzy Stewart, author of Alison and Wreck