This XL book, previously available as a limited edition SUMO, is the culmination of an incredible career, and the result of two years' worth of research into his personal archives. Through penetrating pictures of the beautiful and the notorious, the idolized and the powerful, friends and family, writers, artists, and fellow photographers, Bailey presents a sweeping cultural history of the last 60 years, decade by decade. Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Kate Moss, Nelson Mandela, Francis Bacon, Zaha Hadid, the Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Margaret Thatcher, and hundreds more subjects are exposed to Bailey's uniquely penetrating gaze.

As his friend Damien Hirst writes in the foreword: "He's the master of his art and he's created a mind-blowing visual language." Additional text includes a three-part essay on Bailey's portraiture by noted photography critic Francis Hodgson. David Bailey is the definitive record of one of the great postwar photographers and Britian's most famous living artist.