Honor Clerk

August Auguste

The painter struggled in life, emotionally and financially. But his friends marvelled at his amiable stoicism

issue 07 October 2017

In 1959 the formidable interviewer John Freeman took the Face to Face crew to the 81-year-old Augustus John’s studio. The beetling brow, piercing eye and a succession of roll-ups stuck to his lower lip offer almost a caricature of the undimmed rascality of the old devil. Like all the films in that remarkable series, it offers a glimpse into a world that we thought television was invented too late to record.

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