Peppiatt met Bacon in the early '60s when he interviewed him for a student newspaper. He stayed friends with Bacon for the rest of the artist's life, and his account benefits from clear-eyed fondness. Given the details Peppiatt makes public here, we can be grateful that he hasn't written a sensationalistic book, though many of the details are juicy. We find out that the only person from his upbringing with whom Bacon stayed close was his nanny, Jessie Lightfoot. When she couldn't find work, he took her in, and she lived with him and his various lovers until her death, in 1951.
Nothing is presented moralistically here.
Peppiatt doesn't gloss over the way Bacon took advantage of some lovers or the sharp-tongued remarks that left even longtime friends wounded, any more than he sentimentalizes the generosity that led Bacon to press large sums on friends who had hit hard times. Best of all, Peppiatt doesn't present Bacon's fondness for drinking or masochistic sex as sad or self-destructive. Peppiatt's judgment of how the events of Bacon's life played out in his paintings feels very sound, if at times a bit too Freudian. The problem he faces is similar to the one Bacon said figurative painters face in the age of photography. With photography taking over the function of illustration, it is up to figurative painters to find a reality beyond literal representation.