Icily elegant and eerily still, Tristram Hilliers paintings present a dreamlike, post-apocalyptic world of deserted seashores strewn with debris, empty streets and country lanes where it is forever winter. In this extensively illustrated biography the first of an artist whose reputation has been eclipsed by recent developments in British art Jenny Pery traces Hilliers career from the hedonism of his early years, when he was associated with Surrealism and the international avantgarde, to the asceticism that marked his later life. Many of Hilliers most important works are reproduced, revealing him as one of the most important British painters of his time.