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Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers
by Michael Holroyd
On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters that move through Michael Holroyd's new book are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone unites them all.
A Book of Secrets is a treasure trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements, and family mysteries. With grace and tender imagination, Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into the light. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West - these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world.
Also on the margins is the elusive biographer, who on occasion turns an appraising eye upon himself as part of his investigations in the maze of biography. In A Book of Secrets, Holroyd gives voice to fragile human connections and the mystery of place.
"Starred Review. [T]he always elegant Holroyd is at the top of his game... Holroyd writes like an angel and memorably draws the rivulets of these fluid lives together." - Publishers Weekly
"The book is best for the reader well studied in this era and its learning; it has untranslated French and Latin phrases scattered throughout. Fans of the exploits of the early 20th-century British nobility and literary aristocracy will enjoy this gently entertaining history." - Library Journal
"Purportedly Holroyd's 'last book,' this is an elegant literary study by a seasoned biographer and wonderfully engaging writer." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A]s the narrative unfolds he slowly presents more of himself, so that his biographical credo and his convalescent body emerge in passages that are moving and illuminating." - The Telegraph (UK)
"Here, [Holroyd] has given us the distilled essence of biography and a fitting end to what he evokes as the 'comedy of life.'" - The Guardian (UK)
"A Book of Secrets is itself mysterious. It is written with Holroyd's characteristic charm, a combination of sympathy and gentle mockery." - The Independent (UK)
This information about A Book of Secrets was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, Ellen Terry, and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.
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