The Lamberts : George, Constant & Kit

Andrew Motion

When Kit Lambert - manager of The Who, flamboyant self-publicist and rock and rock genius of the sixties - died of drink and drug abuse, he brought to an end a three-generation family saga. Brilliant achievement and tragic waste has also marked the careers of his grandfather George, Australia's leading painter, and his father Constant, the composer and co-founder of Sadler's Wells ballet immortalised in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. A gifted, controversial and self-destructive trio whose extraordinary lives span and define a century of artistic achievement.