Andy Friend is an author and curator who turned to writing after a long career leading major public and private organizations. His celebrated artist biographies, Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship and John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace, are both published by Thames & Hudson. Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and leading authority on 20th-century British art. She is the author of many books, including the critically acclaimed The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars (Thames & Hudson, 2022).
'The rise of the far right and authoritarianism in our own time makes this book vital reading for everybody concerned with visual culture' - Peter Kennard, Professor Emeritus of Political Art, Royal College of Art 'Friend’s book tells the story of the AIA dispassionately and with clarity: a triumph, given the subject’s organisational and moral complexities. It also reintroduces artists who, for reasons of those complexities, tend to have faded from history: Rowe and Angus both deserve to be better known than they are' - Charles Darwent, TLS 'Comrades in Art tells a largely unknown story. Friend, who has written acclaimed studies of the painters Ravilious and John Nash, has done an exemplary job' - Stephen Smith, Observer