Patrick McCaughey’s Fred Williams is a rare event in Australian publishing, a substantial and scholarly monograph on a living Australian artist. Fred Williams, born in 1927, belongs to the so-called ‘heroic years’ of modern Australian painting (1940-65), yet his reputation as ‘Australia’s leading painter’ was made during the decade that followed. Unlike his contemporaries – among them Charles Blackman – who made their reputations before going overseas, Williams spent most of his formative years (1951-56) in England. The works from this period are mainly figurative and shaped by his experience of London life music hall and other genre subjects.