Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- 1. Young Lucian: art in wartime London -- 2. Pope Francis -- 3. Euston Road in Camberwell -- 4. Spirit in the mass: the Borough Polytechnic -- 5. Girl with roses -- 6. Leaping into the void -- 7 Life into art: Bacon and Freud in the 1950s -- 8. Two climbers roped together -- 9. What makes the modern home so different? -- 10. An arena in which to act -- 11. The situation in London, 1960 -- 12. The artist thinks: Hockney and his contemporaries -- 13. The grin without the cat: Bacon and Freud in the 1960s -- 14. American connections -- 15. Mysterious conventionality -- 16. Portrait surrounded by artistic devices -- 17. Shimmering and dissolving -- 18. The non-existence of action -- Epilogue.

The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s has never before been told before as a single narrative. R. B. Kitaj's proposal, made in 1976, that there was a 'substantial School of London' was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley.