Freud's life writ large over many a breakfast

LUCIAN Freud has been dead for less than a month but already the first book deal has been sealed for a "revelatory" biography.

LUCIAN Freud has been dead for less than a month but already the first book deal has been sealed for a "revelatory" biography.

Freud, who was 88 when he died, was one of the most acclaimed painters of the 20th century and for a while the most expensive artist alive, but the real attraction for readers will be his unconventional private life, never before examined in depth.

A serial womaniser from a famous family, he left behind at least a dozen children (some estimates say as many as 40), and thought nothing of breakfasting on woodcock and fine burgundy. He was adored by gangsters, supermodels and aristocrats as well as other great artists.

The book will be written by Geordie Greig, editor of the London Evening Standard and former editor of Tatler, who for the past 10 years was among a select group who regularly breakfasted with Freud on Saturday mornings at Clarke's restaurant in Kensington Church Street, London.

In interviews that he published with Freud during his lifetime, Greig elicited from the famously private artist the story of how the Kray twins had threatened to kill him over an unpaid gambling debt, as well as happier memories of escorting Greta Garbo out on the town at the height of her fame.

The artist's death has freed him to reveal much more. Despite their closeness, Greig said that his "kaleidoscopic memoir-cum-biography", scheduled for publication next year, would be dispassionate in tone, because that's how Freud would have wanted it.

"Lucian was always unafraid of the truth," he says.

"Other people's versions of what happened with him is not something he was ever scared of. What he really valued more than anything else was his privacy and actually, once you are no longer around, if you are a huge achiever, your private life becomes of wider public interest. That's not to say you don't have to be sensitive [as a biographer]. There are people around who were involved with him, as models, or friends or lovers . . ."

Greig first wrote to Freud when he was 17 and continued to write asking for an interview for many years, without success. Finally, in 2005, he wrote to Freud to say that he had an idea but would not tell him what it was. His curiosity piqued, Freud called at 6am to invite Greig to his studio. They met for the first time, for breakfast with Freud's friend, the painter Frank Auerbach, at London's Smithfield Market at 5.30 one morning.

Over the ensuing years Greig says they had many long conversations on subjects as diverse as "art, debt, enemies, death threats, poetry, escaping from Nazi Germany, falling out with Jerry Hall, why he hated his brother Clement, painting David Hockney, his first love, sleeping with horses, escaping the Krays, hanging with the Queen, his role as a father, why Velazquez was the greatest painter, death and dancing with Garbo".

Greig recorded many of them and his book Breakfast with Lucian will use those conversations as a starting point. Additional layers will come from interviews and recollections from those who knew Freud. The book will include some of Greig's own photographs.