Virginia Woolf memorably claimed that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’. She was referring to the opening in London of the exhibition ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’, curated by Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Modern art had, suddenly, burst upon the town, and it created a sensation. What was it, though? What did it mean? Where was it going? And could it exist in Britain?

A generation of young British artists spent the second decade of the 20th century fretting over these questions, grappling with the swiftly evolving challenges of continental innovation – the experiments of abstraction, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism – and seeking a distinctly British modern art. 

Vorticism was a response to these questions. But it was by no means the only one. It erupted into a crowded cultural scene of shifting allegiances, fleeting group endeavours, short-lived exhibiting societies and – above all – vying personalities. James King has had the neat idea of telling the story