Everything about Picasso, except his physical stature, was on an enormous scale. His appetite for sex, money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedy and tragedy, are legendary. An awe-inspiringly productive painter, he also made a large amount of money during his life. A few painters have rivalled his life-span of 90 years, but none has attracted so insatiable a public interest. This biography gives full weight to the distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso's character and art. The man that emerges from it is one of many contradictions: hard and tender, mean and generous, affectionate and cold, private despite his relish of fame. A man who, despite the professed communism of his later years, in the author's view retained to the end of his life a residual Catholic mentality.