OE, Christopher Simon Sykes Photographer/writer from Yorkshire who has just published the first volume of a two-part biography of David Hockney Hockney: The Biography by Christopher Simon Sykes My Neighbour, David Hockney
December 15, 2011
Encouraged by the fact that he had read and enjoyed The Big House, Mr Sykes decided to ask if he could write a new biography of him. Trying to persuade him to agree was no easy task. "I’m not really in the mood for reflection," he told the writer, "I’ve got too much to look forward to."
And what a story it turned out to be….His fascinating childhood spent in wartime Bradford against a background of great struggle, owing to his father being a conscientious objector, and during which the entire family were almost wiped out by a bomb; the austere postwar period when the local authority consistently turned down his applications to go early to art school; his time at the Royal College of Art amongst the rebellious first generation of young post-war artists; his growing acceptance of his sexuality at a time when he could have gone to prison for being a homosexual, and his courageous use of his art as propaganda for the cause; and his extraordinary rise to fame and remarkable creativity against the background of his life in Swinging London, Gay California and Bohemian Paris.
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