You get the sense that the interviews for this oral history – drawn from several decades of conversations with Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Steve McQueen, Liam Gallagher, Sarah Lucas, Kate Moss, et al – were not always done in the most professional of settings. It would explain the book’s charm and frankness. Jones also knows when to pipe up between the interviews, offering his own takes on exactly why it was that the YBAs or New Labour or Britpop at large found just the right conditions in 1995 to shape a new cultural and political mood, across the UK and the world.