A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

2.9/5 ( ratings)

On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello stands 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 - they lived through different eras and reside in different countries. Yet the Villa Cimbrone unites them all.
A Book of Secrets is a treasure-trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements and family mysteries. Michael Holroyd peers into dusty corners to bring a company of unknown women into the light. Their lives are fluid and vulnerable - they play the role of mistress, fiancée, or muse - and always somehow illegitimate. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; Eve Fairfax, Lord Grimthorpe's abandoned fiancée and sometime muse of Auguste Rodin; and finally, to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West in one of the most scandalous love affairs of the early twentieth-century: these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world.
Also on the periphery is the elusive biographer, Michael Holroyd, who turns the spotlight upon himself as part of his investigations into the art of biography. Taking the reader on a journey of discovery from Ravello to Paris, from Kirkstall Grange in Yorkshire to Vita Sackville-West's home at Knole, A Book of Secrets lucidly gives voice to fragile human connections.

Language: English

Pages: 272

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Chatto Windus

Release: November 04, 2010

ISBN: 0701185341

ISBN 13: 9780701185343

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

Michael Holroyd

2.9/5 ( ratings)

Read Download

Language: English

Pages: 272

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Chatto Windus

Release: November 04, 2010

ISBN: 0701185341

ISBN 13: 9780701185343

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Popular Genres

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

More books from Michael Holroyd

Lytton Strachey: The New Biography

Basil Street Blues: A Memoir

A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families

Augustus John: The New Biography

Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition

Bernard Shaw, Volume 1: The Search for Love, 1856-98

On Wheels

The Last Colonial

Bernard Shaw, Vol. 2: The Pursuit of Power, 1898-1918

Lytton Strachey by Himself: A Self-Portrait

Dizzy: A Life Of Benjamin Disreali

Works on Paper

The Best of Hugh Kingsmill

A Month in the Country

The Butcher of Poland: Hitler's Lawyer Hans Frank

Mosaic: A Family Memoir Revisited

A Dog's Life

Facts and Fiction: A Book of Storytelling

The Art of Augustus John

The Shaw Companion (Bernard Shaw, Vols. 4-5)