A Forger's Tale Confessions of the Bolton Forger

In 2007, Bolton Crown Court sentenced Shaun Greenhalgh to four years and eight months in prison for the crime of producing artistic forgeries. Working out of a shed in his parents' garden, Greenhalgh had successfully fooled some of the world's greatest museums. During the court case, the breadth of his forgeries shocked the art world and tantalized the media. What no one realzsed was how much more of the story there was to tell. Written in prison, A Forger's Tale details Shaun's notorious career and the extraordinary circumstances that led to it. From Leonardo drawings to L.S. Lowry paintings, from busts of U.S. presidents to Anglo-Saxon brooches, from cutting-edge Modernism to the ancient art of the Stone Age, Greenhalgh could—and did—copy it all. Told with great wit and charm, this is the definitive account of Britain's most successful and infamous forger, a man whose love for art saturates every page of this extraordinary memoir.

Shaun Greenhalgh lives and works in Bolton. Waldemar Januszczak is Britain's most distinguished art critic. Formerly the art critic of the Guardian, he now writes for the Sunday Times, and has twice won the Critic of the Year award.

Introduction 1
Preface 9
I. A knock at the door 11
II. A mention in passing 33
III. Consequences 55
IV. In the beginning 71
V. The wrong direction 101
VI. Rome and beyond 141
VII. Not doing Degas 183
VIII. All that glitters 215
IX. Seeing is believing 259
X. The road to Amarna 305
Postscript 351
Glossary 359