Nigel Richardson first met Josh Avery when he was a boy, but it was only much later, when he hired him to decorate his house in Hampshire, that he got to know him well . Before long the decorating took second place to the anecdotes, as Richardson sat in fascinated thrall to Avery's rich fund of anecdotes of his life in and around the post-war Soho demi-monde that included Daniel Farson, William Empson, George Barker, Henrietta Moraes, John Minton - and, most notably, Francis Bacon. Richardson was never quite sure if the stories were true or not - and the obituaries when Josh died made the same point, while revealing tantalising glimpses of stories still untold. But it seemed not to matter. Taking the moment when Josh went AWOL from the navy and was picked up by Daniel Farson as his starting point, Richardson has woven a life of Josh that might be true in every detail, or might not. Employing the same technique as in his highly acclaimed Breakfast in Brighton - what you might call imaginative non-fiction - he has produced a book which captures the essence of a time and a place now gone. It is a magnificent achievement.