'Gayford is a great travelling companion. Where art criticism can be pompous, wordy and jargon-filled, here he’s warm, honest, confiding, intelligent, yes, but never talking down to his reader' - Shiny New Books
'Martin Gayford is a perceptive and informed critic who has been writing about art for several decades and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject … Gayford’s light touch makes it a thumping good read' - The Artist
'An admirable book … one of [Gayford’s] talents is the ability to convey the essence of an artist’s work, a style or an art movement in clear, concise passages that contain no jargon' - Country Life
'A charming short book about [Gayford’s] peregrinations and how different contexts have affected his thinking about the art and the artists' - Michael Prodger’s Books of the Year, Sunday Times
'The experience of reading Gayford’s travelogue is buoyed along by his crisp, lucid prose … In its understated way, the book offers a kind of modern-day equivalent to Herodotus – with Gayford dutifully trudging the earth, reporting on things both incidental and profound' - Times Literary Supplement
Interwoven with these accounts are journeys to meet artists – Robert Rauschenberg in New York, Marina Abramovic in Venice, Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris – or travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. These encounters not only provide insights into the way artists approach and think about their art but also reveal the importance of their personal environments. And in the process, Gayford discusses how these meetings have impacted on his own evolving ideas and tastes.