First published in 1960, Permanent Red established John Berger as a firebrand critic willing to broadcast controversial opinions on some of the most important British artists of the day, including Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

In the centre of a 1960s hospital ward sits a curtained-off bed, guarded by a policeman. In it lies a murderer, hidden from view and likely to die before he can be hanged for his crime. In the closed, regimented society of the ward, his invisible presence fractures and rebuilds the way the other patients see the world. In the face of someone who has shattered all social covenants, life can no longer continue according to the rules.

Upturning conventions from morality to masculinity to class to prejudice, The Foot of Clive is a masterclass on humanity from the Booker Prize-winning author of G.

In A Fortunate Man, Berger’s text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal.

With a new introduction by writer and GP, Gavin Francis.

‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.’

‘But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.’

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: ‘This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.’ By now he has.

John Berger (b. 1926) is an art critic, painter and novelist.born in Hackney, London.
His novel G. (1972) won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize.

If you enjoyed Ways of Seeing, you might like Susan Sontag’s On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of professional art critics … he is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation’
Peter Fuller, Arts Review

‘The influence of the series and the book … was enormous … It opened up for general attention areas of cultural study that are now commonplace’
Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling

‘One of the most influential intellectuals of our time’
Observer