E.M. Forster. Duncan Grant. Eddy Sackville-West. Painting in the sun in an idyllic artist commune; croquet on the lawn and fine wine with lunch. It was the mid-1950s; Britain had 'never had it so good.' These were the boys of the Bloomsbury Group: writers and artists who indelibly shaped British cultural life.

Into this circle appeared Mattei Radev: a stowaway and an unknown, a refugee from Communist Bulgaria. He started life in London as a hospital orderly; he ended it a celebrated framer with work in the most famous galleries in the world.

Intimate and tender, this is a spellbinding portrait of London's midcentury bohemia and an outsider's pursuit of friendship, freedom - and a room to call his own.

E.M. Forster. Duncan Grant. Eddy Sackville-West. Painting in the sun in an idyllic artist commune; croquet on the lawn and fine wine with lunch. It was the mid-1950s; Britain had 'never had it so good.' These were the boys of the Bloomsbury Group: writers and artists who indelibly shaped British cultural life.

Into this circle appeared Mattei Radev: a stowaway and an unknown, a refugee from Communist Bulgaria. He started life in London as a hospital orderly; he ended it a celebrated framer with work in the most famous galleries in the world.

Intimate and tender, this is a spellbinding portrait of London's midcentury bohemia and an outsider's pursuit of friendship, freedom - and a room to call his own.