The best books on the artist and the art of living

The best of biography and a passionate and enthralling account by Selina Hastings of the life of her bohemian father Jack, who escaped his ultra-conservative family to pursue a career as a painter.

With his beautiful Italian wife Cristina, the daughter of the legendary Marchesa Casati famed for her outrageously ornate masked balls, he left Europe for the New World.

They firstly settled in Australia then on the Island of Moorea in the South Pacific, eventually reaching California where Hastings met the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo.

After persuading Rivera to take him on as his painting assistant, he and Cristina spent four years in Mexico City before returning to England. He later taught fresco painting at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in the 1950s - just a few years before I became a student at the Southampton Row establishment and in due course also took up mural painting myself.

This is a fascinating and beautifully written story of the private life of an aristocratic family in the last century.

The best tale and totally mesmerizing story of the confidence-man Felix Krull, who developed the art of subterfuge and deception to a phenomenal degree.

Escaping from a childhood of poverty he eventually rose to mingle with the highest echelons of European society. Helped by being young and good-looking Krull was irresistible to women, of which he was not slow to take advantage.

This chameleon-like quality enabled him to adapt to countless situations and to pursue his career as a highly gifted swindler impervious to the conduct and morals of normal humankind.

When, eventually, the Marquis de Venosta makes him a proposal he cannot refuse - his world changes.

A bewitching experience.

For me this is undoubtably the best biography of Francis Bacon.

It illuminates in detail the life of my mysterious and exotic neighbour, who lived only a stone's throw away over the wall from my flat in Manson Place, South Kensington, in the early 1960s.

Bacon's early struggles, to eventually becoming the lauded and celebrated genius in later life, encompass in this fascinating account, a plethora of characters from both high and low life, a cavalcade of lovers, an addiction to gambling and drinking spanning Soho to Tangier, with sojourns in Paris and the South of France on the way. He religiously painted in the mornings.

Many of the episodes and vignettes are unforgettable and a valuable insight into the machinations of the 'art world' in the 20th century.

This compelling and exhausting portrait of the artist, born in Dublin to Anglo-Irish gentry in 1909 and living to the age of 82, is not for the faint-hearted (it is a mammoth 850 pages) but enthralling.

The best story, most engrossing of all and set between the wars, is about the unlikely friendship that developed between the fifty-one-year-old spinster, Edith Olivier and the young artist Rex Whistler thirty years her junior.

Edith Olivier (a cousin of the actor Laurence Olivier) became devoted to Rex, as muse and most fervent supporter, thus transforming both of their lives.

Her home, the Daye House on the Wilton Estate, became a sanctuary for Whistler and the gaiety and fun of the period is perfectly evoked by the author, with a cast of friends and acquaintances that bring it to life in the most engaging manner.

Rex Whistler, perhaps best known for his mural for Lord Anglesey at Plas Newydd, had a glittering and successful career, cut short by his sudden death at the age of thirty-nine, killed by a mortar bomb on the 18th July 1944.

Edith was devastated and as Lady Diana Cooper recalled in her memoir 'heart-breaking' 'the saddest that the war brought to me'.

An enchanting and poignant narrative.

The best-fictionalised biography of the exiled German Nobel Prize winner of 1929, Thomas Mann.

This elegant and intimate portrait of a great writer is a 'tour de force'. Compelling and imaginative it masterfully captures the private and public conflict of Mann and his family during a time of global tumult.

Mann's infatuation with one of the richest and cultured Jewish families in Munich results in his marriage with their daughter Katia. However, this only adds to his inner turmoil created by his secret private life, compounded by the rise of Hitler, and his need to rethink his relationship with Germany.

Colm Toibin manages to weave all the many entanglements along the way to achieve a profound and moving story.