AUTHOR’S NOTE

This story is written partly from memory but also with the help of detailed diaries that I kept from the date of meeting Sergei Klokov and Elena Khudiakova in Paris in 1985 until 1992.

I also created an archive of all correspondence I received during this time, including letters from Francis Bacon, telegrams from the Union of Artists in Moscow and all relevant newspaper cuttings and invitations.

I have drawn on all of this material while researching this book.

My ambition was to write a true and faithful reckoning of a brief but intensely interesting period in twentieth-century European history from a very personal perspective.

Any mistakes are my own.

James Birch

May 2021