Edith Devaney is head of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and curator of contemporary projects at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Hockney himself is present in every aspect of the publication. He collaborated closely through all production stages and conceived of this book as a purely visual survey of more than 450 works prefaced by a handwritten programmatic statement.

As an artist who rarely looks back, the vast volume is as much his own personal review as it is a definitive record for art lovers all over the world. “I don’t tend to live in the past,” he comments, “Working on this book, I see quite how much I have done.”

William Boyd is the author of one work of non-fiction, three collections of short stories and thirteen novels, including the bestselling historical spy thriller Restless winner of the Costa Novel of the Year and Any Human Heart, in which the character of Ian Fleming features.

Among his other awards are the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Jean Monnet. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Born in Ghana in 1952, William Boyd spent much of his early life in West Africa. He now divides his time between the south-west of France and Chelsea, where he lives a stone’s throw from James Bond’s London address.