Greyhound Literary

Ben Lewis

Ben Lewis is an author, art historian, podcaster, and documentary-film-maker, internationally known for his investigations of the art world, and his focus on the space where the arts and culture intersect with politics and economics.

His most recent published book The Last Leonardo, about the world’s most expensive painting, the $450m Salvator Mundi, controversially attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, was published in 2019 by HarperCollins in the UK and Penguin Random House in America. The book, written while he was a Visiting Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, occupied the entire front page of The Times on the day of its release and he was also invited to speak on the opening weekend of the Hay Festival. The Guardian praised its “formidably researched detail” and the Sunday Times admired its “gripping investigation".

Ben is also known for features documentaries investigating art and culture, which include ‘The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (BBC, Arte, SVT etc., 2009), ‘A Banker’s Guide to Art’ (BBC 2016), a film about Google’s book scanning project 'Google and the World Brain’ (2012, premiered at Sundance), and another about ’The Beatles, the Hippies and the Hells Angels’ (2017). His feature documentaries have premiered at Sundance, Tribeca and IDFA and won  Grierson, Peabody and Grimme Prizes.

Ben’s podcast ‘Art Bust’ (NBC/Universal, 2021) told the stories of six art scandals and crimes, with the co-operation of the FBI and the Manhattan ADA Matthew Bogdanos. Art Bust’s story of the Metropolitan Museum’s looted Egyptian coffin, which Kardashian had herself photographed next to at the Met Ball, went viral.

Ben has written as an art critic and reporter for The Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Evening Standard, Libération, Die Welt, Prospect magazine UK, Monopol Germany, Art Review, The Art Newspaper etc. 

Ben Lewis is fluent in German and speaks French and Italian to a high standard.

Books

The Forger of Siena
The Forger of Siena