Tom de Freston is a visual artist based in Oxford, and the author of Wreck: A Story of Art and Survival (Granta 2021). Among various fellowships and residencies he has held a Leverhulme residency at Cambridge University, a Levy Plumb Residency at Christ's College and the inaugural Creative Fellowship at Birmingham University. His work is regularly exhibited, and is represented in numerous public and private collections. With his wife, the writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave, he is the co-creator of Orpheus and Eurydice and Julia and the Shark, winner of the Waterstones Children's Gift of the Year.
I was hollowed out by Strange Bodies and then put back together. It's such a generous book, not just in what it shares, but what it gives the reader: it's a book full of love that makes you see what really matters, both in art and life. Clever, tender, completely compelling. I loved it -- Ella Risbridger Strange Bodies takes us on a remarkable journey. This book is a careful drawing-forth: art and interior landscapes mingle and the reader becomes wholly absorbed, emerging horrified, grief-stricken, uplifted and profoundly moved -- Helen Mort