Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Francis Bacon in Your Blood cover art

Francis Bacon in Your Blood

By: Michael Peppiatt
Narrated by: Michael Peppiatt
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £19.00

Buy Now for £19.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Lives of Lucian Freud cover art
Modern Nature cover art
Unreasonable Behaviour cover art
Beware of Pity cover art
Murphy cover art
London Made Us cover art
Ninth Street Women cover art
Oil and Marble cover art
The Truth About Julia cover art
The Smoking Diaries cover art
Portrait of an Artist cover art
Broad Strokes cover art
AMORALMAN cover art
The Socratic Dialogues: Middle Period, Volume 3 cover art
The Personal Librarian cover art
I Can't Date Jesus cover art

Summary

It is a story I have been wanting to write for a long time, telling it as it really was before that whole world that I shared with Francis vanishes....

Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in June 1963 in Soho's French House to request an interview for a student magazine he was editing. Bacon invited him to lunch, and over oysters and Chablis they began a friendship and a no-holds-barred conversation that would continue until Bacon's death 30 years later.

Fascinated by the artist's brilliance and charisma, Peppiatt accompanied him on his nightly round of prodigious drinking from grand hotel to louche club and casino, seeing all aspects of Bacon's 'gilded gutter life' and meeting everybody around him, from Lucian Freud and Sonia Orwell to East End thugs; from predatory homosexuals to Andy Warhol and the Duke of Devonshire. He also frequently discussed painting with Bacon in his studio, where only the artist's closest friends were ever admitted. The Soho photographer, John Deakin, who introduced the young student to the famous artist, called Peppiatt 'Bacon's Boswell'.

Despite the chaos Bacon created around him Peppiatt managed to record scores of their conversations ranging over every aspect of life and art, love and death, the revelatory and hilarious as well as the poignantly tragic.

Gradually Bacon became a kind of father figure for Peppiatt, and the two men's lives grew closely intertwined. In this intimate and deliberately indiscreet account, Bacon is shown close-up, grand and petty, tender and treacherous by turn, and often quite unlike the myth that has grown up around him. This is a speaking portrait, a living likeness, of the defining artist of our times.

©2015 Michael Peppiatt (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

What listeners say about Francis Bacon in Your Blood

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    121
  • 4 Stars
    23
  • 3 Stars
    6
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    102
  • 4 Stars
    26
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    104
  • 4 Stars
    25
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Riveting!

Highly enjoyable and fascinating account of the author's experiences with painter Francis Bacon. Great anecdotes, I especially enjoyed the high camp conversations from the colony room featuring the legendary Muriel Belcher.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating. Listened in a one-er.

This book is interesting on so many levels - the work of Francis Bacon, his life, his friends, Paris and Soho. I loved it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

Listening to Michael Peppiatt read his memoirs of his time Francis bacon is a sheer joy. I think a little piece of Francis Bacon lives on in Peppiatt.. Certainly his voice does.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

An Incredible Insight

A moving and powerful epilogue was the perfect ending to a throughly enthralling biography. The author’s own narration of his book adds so much to the story. I will read the text version too, to review the many locations, french phrases, and artists mentioned. An incredible book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Prefect for Bacon lovers

This is an almost perfect insight to one of our greatest artists, living up to the mythic stories of Soho, drinking and painting whilst giving better understanding to the very human person behind images that forever changed the landscape of painting. At times it falls into a pattern of recounting Becon at his most poetic then listing the dinner menu along with the wine list at some expensive restaurant in which this happened to often but honestly you can forgive it is flaws you can't help but wish you where at the table.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Just Bad

Nothing about Bacon’s works or anything remotely important about his life just writer’s blah blahs

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

loved this book

Although I've never been that interested in Francis Bacon, I enjoy looking at his paintings. this book is a great listen from Michael who has known him personally for many years and gives the listener a first-hand account. It's very well written and narrated in my mind. Thanks, Micheal. Regards, Vicki.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

We’ll never get closer to Bacon

A brilliantly performed and captivating memoir. This is the closest anyone will ever get to hearing the man himself speak at length. Peppiatt goes far beyond an impression of Bacon - he embodies him. In doing so he gives us a unique and invaluable insight into what it was like to have a conversation with him. Peppiatt also creates wonderfully detailed sketches of the rooms, people and places where these conversations were happening.
A fascinating listen, highly recommended.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Superb

Lovely to hear it read by the author! Superbly written and wonderfully captivating. There’s a short prologue that I didn’t like and doesn’t seem to fit with the tone of the main book. Please listen past it!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating and beautiful

I enjoyed even single minute of it with every repeat noted as a repeat of Francis himself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!