Damien Hirst to bare truths in autobiography

The British artist is working on a tell-all book for publication in autumn 2015

Damien Hirst's autobiography will hit shelves in autumn 2015 (Getty Images)

Damien Hirst is working on his tell-all autobiography, due to be published in autumn 2015.

The British artist, 48, is co-writing the Penguin book with James Fox, who penned White Mischief and Keith Richards' bestselling 2010 memoir Life.

Fox said the autobiography would be a “fascinating story, told with Hirst’s witty style and northern edge”.

“As well as the well-known arc of the boy from Leeds who took on the art establishment, it will include a barely known first act – a black and hilarious account of Hirst’s youth, growing up in a semi-criminal, often violent milieu while sharing with his friends an unlikely, but binding, passion for art,” he continued.

Hirst said he was pleased to be working with Penguin, who released Morrissey's Autobiography last year, adding: “They are a very cool and creative publisher with a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm.”

During an interview on the Today programme, Fox paid tribute to Hirst's "fearlessness, his ability to take on authority, to never say anything can't be done, to break all the rules".

Hirst won the Turner Prize for Contemporary Art in 1995 and, in 2012, the Tate Modern’s major retrospective of his work became the gallery’s most-visited solo show on record.