Subversive, eccentric and flamboyant - the Bohemians ate garlic and didn't always wash; they painted and danced and didn't care what people thought. They sent their children to co-ed schools; explored homosexuality and Free Love. They were often drunk, broke and hungry but they were rebels.

Virginia Nicholson's Among the Bohemians is a portrait of England's artistic community in the first half of the twentieth century, engaged in a grand experiment.

Subversive, eccentric and flamboyant - the Bohemians ate garlic and didn't always wash; they painted and danced and didn't care what people thought. They sent their children to co-ed schools; explored homosexuality and Free Love. They were often drunk, broke and hungry but they were rebels.

In this fascinating book Virginia Nicholson examines the way the Bohemians refashioned the way we live our lives.

'Interesting, gorgeous, wonderful.... this book displays the best of bohemia itself - playful, dazzling, original' Julie Burchill, Spectator

'Racy, vivacious, warm-hearted. Offers an illuminating and well-researched portrait of life among the artists, a century ago' Miranda Seymour, TLS

Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She has worked as a documentary researcher for BBC Television and her first book, Charleston - A Bloomsbury House and Garden (written in collaboration with her father, Quentin Bell), was an account of the Sussex home of her grandmother, the painter Vanessa Bell. Her second book, Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939, was published by Penguin in 2002. She lives in Sussex.