Paul Johnson turns his great gifts as a popular and much-translated historian to a subject that has enthralled him all his life: the history of art. Art, he believes, was central to human development, more so than writing and even language. This history begins with the earliest rock paintings around 30,000 BC and takes us right up to the present day. E.H. Gombrich's legendary book The Story of Art (pub 1950, sales now over 6 million) owes its popularity to the directness and simplicity of the writing and its clear narrative. These are the same qualities for which Paul Johnson is justly celebrated and they are the foundation of this book. Illuminating with a few words the whole atmosphere of a period, he also suggests a number of overrated periods (such as the Impressionists) while drawing attention to wonderful but unjustly neglected artists, periods and styles, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, Russia and the Americas.

I would come back to it again and again as a reference book. -- JEANETTE WINTERSON THE TIMES Johnson has written one of his best books. THE SPECTATOR Johnson writes like a dream. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH Those on materials and techniques are detailed and informative... His chapter devoted to watercolour painting is exemplary. SUNDAY TIMES Johnson is also consistently good on technology and art - a theme in itself. DAILY TELEGRAPH The readable text, all 750 pages of it, is infused with Johnson's opinions and enthusiasms. CHURCH TIMES Until now, his reputation has rested on his historical, religious and political writings, but he has also been painting since childhood. So Art: A New History is in this respect, the culmination of a lifelong passion, and its 777 close-packed pages consitute, for the most part, a formidable feat of energy... The text benefits from Johnson's tireless travelling. The opposite of an armchair art historian, he clearly relishes the ability to encounter paintings, sculpture and architecture in situ. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Paul Johnson is a phenomenon. In the gaps between writing numerous newspaper columns on both sides of the Atlantic, he has, in the past, found time to produce several stonking histories, on epic theories. Now, in what for other men might have been a well-earned retirement, he has come out with a stupendous new history of art... This will seem old-fashioned to art historians but appealing to museum goers who turn to art for enjoyment. -- CLIVE ASLET COUNTRY LIFE

Paul Johnson was born in 1928. He edited the New Statesman in the 1960s and has written over forty books. His Modern Times, a history of the world from the 1920s to the 1990s, has been translated into more than fifteen languages. As well as a weekly column in the Spectator, he contributes to newspapers all over the world.