Ways of Life

A captivating biography * House & Garden *If ever the spirit of a gallery is captured within hard covers, it is Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, in this beautiful, original biography of its founder… Freeman’s writing has Ede’s flair, grace and insight * Financial Times, Best Books of 2023 *An impassioned biography * The Times, Top 50 Non-Fiction Books *An excellent biography of Jim Ede. Reading Laura Freeman’s luminous study of the curator and collector, I can’t help but picture the gallery and house he built - the haven of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge * Daily Telegraph *Beautifully written… A book I have always hoped someone would write. – Nigel SlaterFreeman has done a wonderful job here in conveying with absolute precision why Ede mattered and what made him different from his Bloomsbury contemporaries * Sunday Times *A thorough and entertaining biography… Excellently paced * The Times *Meticulously researched, sympathetically told, the book is infused with the spirit of Kettle’s Yard * i *Ways of Life is a portable Kettle’s Yard, an entrancing book of immense and curious beauty – Ruth Scurr, author of Fatal PurityLaura Freeman has more than done her subject justice. It is a complicated story, lucidly told and neatly illustrated * Spectator *

Laura Freeman is chief art critic of The Times. She has written for the Spectator, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, Apollo and World of Interiors. Her first book The Reading Cure, a memoir about hunger and happiness, addiction, obsession and recovery, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2018. She studied history of art at Magdalene College, Cambridge.