Walter Sickert fascinated everyone, including himself. He was cosmopolitan, witty, intelligent, handsome and a chameleon in his changing moods and appearance. He was also the leader and mentor of the group of talented young painters who gathered around him in 1911 and became known as the Camden Town Group. This apparently transient and ostentatiously unsuccessful group of like minds produced between them some of the most attractive and important work of the 20th century. Taught by both Whistler and Degas, Sickert became a leading innovator in the artistic world, with a reputation that preceded him. Yet his private life remained as colourful as his work; husband to three women, he had numerous mistresses and a son whom he neglected. He moved in two opposing spheres of society - that of the respectable upper classes, where his patrons would be found, and among the less fortunate, of whom he painted actors, prostitutes and even a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper. This biography traces the life and artistic career of Sickert and of the other major members of the group - Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, Robert Bevan, Lucien Pissaro and Malcom Drummond, each of whom has his own story and also brought something to, and took something from, the Camden Town Group.