Starting from a magazine assignment, Ken Wilkie continued to investigate the life of Van Gogh for the next thirty years and chased evidence of Van Gogh's unknown life all over Europe, from Belgium and the Netherlands to England and France. Ken Wilkie tracked down the last person alive to have actually known Van Gogh, as well as finding new details of his life that illuminate the sources of unhappiness in the artist's life, as well as the origins of his creativity. We find evidence of Van Gogh's relationship with a widow in Lambeth, the grave of a namesake still-born child in the Netherlands, and evidence of the terrible illness that affected both Vincent, and Theo, Van Gogh and which was suppressed by their family afterwards.