LAURA GASCOIGNE is art critic of The Spectator and has written widely on art for The Times and The Tablet, as well as many other journals.JESS WILDER is Co-director of the Portal Gallery and the author of The World of Beryl Cook (Prestel).

Located near Bond Street since 1959, the Portal Gallery is an unpretentious venue for paintings by up-and-coming as well as established artists. For half a century, its patrons have been enthusiastic collectors of the gallery's unusual pictures, which lean toward the fantastic, magical and surreal-often with a dash of humor. This book brings together the most significant works exhibited at the Portal and features artists such as Beryl Cook, whose rotund figures and risque themes are famousthroughout Britain, the renowned Pop artist Peter Blake, who exhibited with the Portal in the 1960s, and Kit Williams, whose paintings from his book Masquerade in 1977 made him worldfamous overnight. Today the paintings of Portal artists such as Jane Lewis, James McNaught and Heather Nevay attract ever-new audiences, confirming the continued appeal of exquisitelyexecuted, imaginative, figurative work amid the passing fashions of the contemporary art market. Illustrated throughout, this book offers a thematic chronicling of a gallery whose mission is to nurture artists who share a flair for the unconventional.