Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story Audiobook (Free)

BOOK FROM THE WEEK ON BBC RADIO 4

PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN

On the dark night time in Provence in December 1888 Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is an act that has come to establish him. However for greater than a hundred years biographers and historians searching for definitive facts about what happened that night have already been left with an increase of questions than answers.

In Vehicle Gogh’s Hearing Bernadette Murphy models out to find just what happened that night in Arles. Why would an designer at the height of his about Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story forces commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious ‘Rachel’ to whom he presented his macabre gift? Was it simply his lobe, or did Van Gogh actually take off his entire ear? Her investigation requires us from major museums to the dusty material of overlooked archives, vividly reconstructing the globe in which Van Gogh transferred – the madams and prostitutes, café customers and police inspectors, his beloved brother Theo and his fellow artist and house-guest Paul Gauguin. With unique revelations and fresh research about the hearing and about ‘Rachel’, Bernadette Murphy proposes a strong new hypothesis in what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep that fateful night.

Van Gogh’s Ear is a compelling detective tale and a trip of discovery. Additionally it is a portrait of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pressing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged towards madness – and one fateful sweep from the blade that would resonate through the ages.