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Bernadette Murphy was born and brought up in the UK. She has lived in the south of France for most of her adult life and worked in many different fields. A series of chance events led her to start investigating the life of Van Gogh in Arles, but little did she know at the time quite what an exciting adventure it would turn out to be. Van Gogh's Ear is her first book.
This book has the pace of a detective novel, sending fresh blood pulsing through an old tale as Murphy recreates the heartbreaking drama of Van Gogh's loosening grip on reality. * Daily Mail * Murphy's revelations are fascinating and add intriguing details to the great crisis of Van Gogh's life. -- Michael Prodger * The Times * Murphy's book rescues the real Van Gogh from the lazy cliches of tea towel memorabilia by painting an electric, nuanced portrait of a man who achieved artistic brilliance despite his mental health issues and not because of them. In doing so, she allows for a version of his history in which her subject's passion for life, art and humanity blooms like the sunflowers he painted. * Daily Mail * She knows Provence with an intimacy that's rare in the ear genre. Her descriptions of the people, their landscape, their customs are unusually detailed... Her second stand-out quality is a doggedness that goes beyond the usual art-historical drives. Relentlessly she wrestles with the book's central mystery. -- Waldemar Januszczak * Sunday Times * No one before has built up such a detailed picture of the people who surrounded the great artist. -- Martin Gayford * Daily Telegraph *
