Jessica Mann
The Birds
Daphne du Maurier and Her Sisters: The Hidden Lives of Piffy, Bird and Bing
By Jane Dunn
HarperPress 423pp £25 order from our bookshop
‘Families are the soil out of which character grows, and there is no richer compost than the relationship of sisters,’ the biographer Jane Dunn explains. Her previous subjects have included the cousin-queens Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, and the sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Now she has turned her attention to the du Maurier sisters, who have provided her with a wealth of material even though the eldest, Angela, ensured that nearly all her personal papers were destroyed, and the youngest, Jeanne, always refused to cooperate with anyone writing about herself or her family. But Daphne, the most famous of the three, left a great archive of letters and private papers.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad