How do you get from Igor Stravinsky to Elvis Presley via Benny Goodman and the King of Thailand? From Henry Miller to Patti Smith via Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass? Ezra Pound to Coco Chanel via Shakespeare and Company? James Joyce's daughter to Peggy Guggenheim via Samuel Beckett? How did the most beautiful woman in the world come to design a radio-controlled missile with the bad boy of music? Did Jackson Pollock learn his drip technique from the man who tried to assassinate Trotsky? Did Stalin turn the inventor of electronic music into a Soviet spy?

This book tells the stories – sometimes unlikely but always fascinating – of first meetings between members of the twentieth century avant-garde, who were all connected to each other in a complex web of relationships; stories of how the artistic baton was passed from the past to the future.