Over five decades, the art of Humphrey Ocean (born 1951) has filtered into British and international culture. This includes his series of portraits entitled A Handbook of Modern Life, displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in 2013; his portrait of Christopher Le Brun, President of the Royal Academy of Arts in London; and the cover of Paul McCartney's 2007 album Memory Almost Full, which featured one of the Chair series.

Ocean's practice encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, bookmaking and drawing. Of the last, he has said: "Paper is lovely, immediate and personal. I draw as an end in itself."

This, the first monograph to bring together works from the early 1970s to the present day, provides a fascinating overview of Ocean's career, with an essay by Ben Thomas, which sets out to discover exactly what it is that makes Ocean's art so appealing and universal.