A Brush with Life - Tapa dura

Frank Smith is an ordinary man who has led an extraordinary life. This remarkable book presents 130 of the paintings which, in 'naive' style, illustrate the privations and heartaches of his life, from his early years in a Kentish workhouse to the deaths in quick succession of his wife and son. With text to tell the fascinating, and often gruelling, stories behind each picture, this book offers an insight into a now-vanished world, and is a testament not only to Frank Smith's own personal odyssey but also to the common experience of the twentieth century.