A Forger’s Tale

This brilliantly wily memoir was written when Greenhalgh was in prison for selling fake art treasures, many of which he forged himself with an accuracy bordering on genius (notably La Bella Principessa, believed for several years, to be a Leonardo). A Forger’s Tale is a book about the class divide, a satire on the art market and a celebration of that great institution, the garden shed. For it was a shed, behind Greenhalgh’s Bradford council house, that was described by Scotland Yard as “the northern annex of the British Museum”. Frances Wilson