Mark Bostridge
Lives & Hard Times
‘Why do you do this? Write biography?’, asks the character of Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s new play, The Habit of Art, currently at the National Theatre. ‘Why not make your own way in the world instead of hitching a lift on the life of someone else?’ Later in the play, Bennett has W H Auden express a similar viewpoint. A biographer is ‘invariably second-rank even when he or she is first-rate’.
These remarks made a friend of mine, who runs a literary festival, hoot with laughter. She says that, more than any other kind of writer, biographers – especially senior ones – tend to be overflowing with airs and graces, as if they had literally taken on the mantles
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It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
literaryreview.co.uk
Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk