BANKSY THE MAN BEHIND THE WALL

Striking design – features graphic chapter headers, two-colour text and printed endpapers The first biography of the world’s most notorious street artist For someone who shuns the limelight by concealing his real name, never showing his face and never giving interviews except by email, Banksy is remarkably famous. In his home city of Bristol, in Los Angeles, in London, in New York, wherever there is a Banksy exhibition there is always a huge queue. Such is the commercial value of his work that people have hacked an entire wall off a building because it bears an example of his art. But who is this man; how did he become what he is now; what makes him tick? How far can we get to know and understand someone who goes to such lengths to keep his distance from us? Now, in the first attempt to tell the full story of Banksy’s life and career, Will Ellsworth-Jones pieces together a picture of the world in which he operates. He talks to both friends and his artistic adversaries, those who knew him in his early unnoticed days and those who have watched him try to come to terms with his new-found fame and fortune, and asks what, ultimately, this enigmatic character and his life’s work add up to. Will Ellsworth-Jones was chief reporter and then New York correspondent for The Sunday Times as well as holding senioreditorial positions at the Telegraph magazine, the Independent magazine and Saga magazine. His previous book for Aurum was We Will Not Fight. He lives in London.