Ways of Life

This first biography of the Kettle’s Yard artists reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art

‘Beautifully written? A book I have always hoped someone would write’ NIGEL SLATER

‘[An] outstanding and enviably well-written biography. Strongly recommend’ INDIA KNIGHT

‘The beautiful, revelatory biography we have been waiting for. I loved it’ EDMUND DE WAAL

Jim Ede was a man of remarkable energy and vision: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. As Laura Freeman shows in this captivating biography, the lives of Ede and the artists he championed represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art.

At Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. Art ca be found there wherever you look – in a pebble, feather or seedhead. His approach has shown generations of visitors that learning to look can be a whole new way of life.

‘A beautiful, original biography? Freeman’s writing has Ede’s flair, grace and insight’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘An extraordinary tale’ LITERARY REVIEW

‘A cabinet of curiosities? The story of a life and of a century’ LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS