Signed limited edition also available. Click here.

Since winning the Turner Prize in 2003, and his recent triumphant exhibition at the centre of the UK art establishment, The British Museum, Grayson Perry seems doomed to become “a national treasure”. “They’re preparing the embroidered slippers,” he remarks.

The first trade publication of this frenetic graphic novel, originally issued as a private publication in 1992, may well cause some recoil among his more unquestioning enthusiasts. Perry has never been afraid to confront his inner drives, and when this book first appeared he wrote:

When I was 12 or 13 I drew a series of short comic-strip adventures featuring an idealised male hero called Riff-Raf. As the hormones of puberty flooded through me these boy’s-own tales became increasing kinky, involving much cross-dressing and bondage. Sadly these live frontline reports from my teenage subconscious were lost in the upheavals of family dysfunction. When I became a father myself I revisited the genre with perhaps a more jaundiced and mischievous eye to create the Cycle of Violence.

This edition has a new foreword by the artist.