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 and explores a thrilling moment in the history of modernism

‘Beautifully written… A book I have always hoped someone would write’ Nigel Slater

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

‘A cabinet of curiosities… The story of a life and of a century’ London Review of Books