Born in Australia, she lived and worked in Hong Kong after WW2 and then for the UN in New York. After marrying the great Flaubert scholar Francis Steegmuller, she lived mostly on Capri. She ... read more
The author must presumably be glad to have used an alias on reading Dominic Sandbrook's review in the Sunday Times. An interminable, banal and exploitative account of her two-year affair.
The first biography of the extraordinary writer who died in 2020. An officer in the 9th Lancers, Morris was posted to Trieste in 1945. He was the only journalist to accompany the 1953 Britis... read more
Born near Lemburg in Galicia - now in Ukraine - the author of The Radetzky March and several other outstanding works died in alcoholic exile on the eve of WW2. This is a powerful account of ... read more
A vivid novel about Edith Somerville, co-author of the Irish R.M., set against the backdrop of burnings, politics and lawlessness of Ireland in the early 1920s.
A novel about the harrowing life of the great Russian poetess. She was involved with both Pasternak and Rilke; her daughter died in the Moscow famine; her husband was executed; and she herse... read more
From Pliny and Piranesi to Alexander Pope and John Piper: a magnificent wander through ruins with writers, travellers and artists, through their eyes and in their words. Arranged chronologic... read more
Marius is the distinguished antiquarian bookseller who features in the work of Javier Marias and worked for Bernard Stone and Peter Ellis; also a wide-ranging writer, most recently on Naples... read more
Thinking and writing about DHL during the pandemic, Feigel found that his ideas affected her own outlook: this is an intriguing blend of biography and memoir.
Written during lockdown, this is a book by a writer on top of his game. The ostensible subject is endings, last things, work produced in 'late style'... But, this being Geoff Dyer, it's abou... read more
A marvellous biography of this clever, brilliant, opportunistic, amoral, inquisitive man - Damrosch's erudition serves his notorious subject very well.
Today's pre-eminent author for children is a Fellow of All Souls. Now she turns her scholarly attention to the religious outsider, social disaster, celebrity preacher, establishment darling,... read more
Follows up his Young Eliot (2015, pbk £14.99). Draws on all correspondence including the archive with his lover Emily Hale, which remained sealed until 2020.
Captures the spirit of the late C18th by looking at JJ’s dinner parties. He was a publisher, bookseller, and a friend of Blake, Wordsworth, Fuseli, Coleridge, Wollstonecraft etc...
Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch & Philippa Foot: they got to know one another as Oxford students during WW2, and went on to have huge influence on subsequent decades.
The story of the son of a Parsi-convert vicar near Birmingham who, convicted for mutilating horses and writing threatening letters to the vicar, contacted Conan Doyle to unravel the mystery ... read more
A compelling portrait of the writer and her engagement with her own world. Constructed as a series of essays on art, memory, painting, rank, property, appearance, etc., this is immensely rea... read more
The title is part of her 1947 New Year's Eve toast. Openly gay, Highsmith was famously beastly to lovers and friends. This new biography traces connections between her complex character and ... read more
Ronald Knox, in his sermon at GKC's funeral, said "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton", y... read more