LOST, STOLEN OR SHREDDED, OR HAS - Couverture souple

Like Sherlock Holmes's dog in the night time, sometimes the true significance of things lies in their absence. Rick Gekoski tells the very human stories that lie behind some of the greatest losses to artistic culture - and addresses the questions such disappearances raise. Some of the items are stolen (the Mona Lisa), some destroyed (like Philip Larkin's diaries, shredded, then burnt, on his dying request) and some were lost before they even existed, like the career of the brilliant art deco architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which foundered amid a lack of cash - but behind all of them lies an often surprising story which reveals a lot about what art means to us. Gekoski explores in depth the greater questions these tremendous losses raise - such as the rights artists and authors have over their own work, the importance of the search for perfection in creativity, and what motivated people to queue to see the empty space where the Mona Lisa once hung in the Louvre.

'A natural and skilled storyteller' Colm Tolbin

'Think Bill Bryson, only on books' Tatler

'An informed and discursive interrogator ... these essays entertainingly mix whodunit narrative with cultural polemics' Evening Standard

'Illuminating and eclectic' Financial Times

'Highly entertaining ... One finishes the book exhilarated and amused' --Observer

'Rick Gekoski is charming company as a writer. His style is fluent and raconteur-ish ... A general knowledge-widening book which also makes you think about what does or doesn't matter in life.' Country Life

'Gekoski has an ear for lively prose and a nose for a good story' --Toby Lichtig, TLS

'Rick Gekoski is charming company as a writer. His style is fluent and raconteur-ish ... A general knowledge-widening book which also makes you think about what does or doesn't matter in life.' --Country Life