Michael Baxandall (1933-2008) was probably the most influential art historian of his generation. In this memoir, he reflects on his childhood in Cardiff, his education at Cambridge and on the continent, and his early work with Pope Hennessey at the V&A and Gombrich at the Warburg. Its elegant prose offers a rare insight into the mind of this 'laconic, intense, shy, passionate man', as the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg describes him in the foreword.