When Michael Holroyd's life of Strachey first appeared in the late 1960s, it was hailed as a landmark in contemporary biography. Drawing on new material, published and unpublished, Holroyd completely revised and rewrote his masterwork in 1995 to tell the full story of this complex man and his world as it could not be told while many of Strachey's friends and lovers were still alive.At the heart of the story is the poignant liaison between Strachey and the painter Dora Carrington. A...

A Book of Secrets is a masterfully atmospheric treasure-trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements and family mysteries.Acclaimed biographer Michael Holroyd peers into dusty corners to bring a company of unknown women into the light; Alice Keppel was the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; Eve Fairfax was Lord Grimthorpe's abandoned fiancée and sometime muse of Auguste Rodin; and the novelist Violet Trefusis was the lover of Vita Sack...

As read on BBC Radio 4Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography for A Strange Eventful History and winner of the Lifetime Services to Biography Award.Michael Holroyd is one of the finest biographers of our time yet he was never interested in exploring his own family's history until the death of his parents in the 1980s. Then, faced with a sudden vacuum, he felt a desire to fill it with the stories of their lives.

Michael Holroyd – the most famous biographer in Britain – turns his attention upon himself and his own family in Basil Street Blues (the title comes from the Basil Street Hotel where the author was conceived in the 1930s). Born into a family rich in eccentricity, Holroyd was largely brought up by his grandparents in Maidenhead because his exotic Swedish mother and reserved English father couldn't stand living together. (His grandparents' marriage provided no better model – his grandfather ...

Playwright, wit, socialist, polemicist, vegetarian and charmer, Bernard Shaw was a controversial literary figure, the scourge of Victorian values and middle-class pretensions.This is Michael Holroyd's essential biography of George Bernard Shaw. With its pace and verve, its comedy, drama and politics, it portrays a provocative and paradoxical figure sympathetically and movingly.

"A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."—Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book ReviewRenowned biographer Michael Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But an investigation into the Holroyd past—guided by old photograph albums, crumbling documents, and his parents' wildly divergent accounts of their lives—gradually yields clues to a constellation of startling events and eccen...

'This is a book about surprises – at any rate, it has surprised me.'In 1999, Michael Holroyd published Basil Street Blues, in which one of our finest biographers turned his attentions to something more personal – his own family. But rather than the story being over, in fact it was just beginning. For as the letters from readers started to arrive, the author discovered an extraordinary narrative that his own memoir had only touched upon. Mosaic, then, is Michael Holroyd's piecing to...

A BOOK OF SECRETS is a masterfully atmospheric treasure-trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements and family mysteries. Acclaimed biographer Michael Holroyd peers into dusty corners to bring a company of unknown women into the light; Alice Keppel was the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; Eve Fairfax was Lord Grimthorpe's abandoned fiancée and sometime muse of Auguste Rodin; and the novelist Violet Trefusis was the lover of Vita Sackville-West. Taki...

«Un libro de secretos es, sin duda, un libro de revelaciones, de sorpresas emotivas... Una narración bellamente estructurada, salpicada de sorpresas y deslumbrantes cambios de enfoque».The Daily Telegraph«Absolutamente evocador y bellamente escrito… Holroyd exhibe sus habilidades de investigador y detective; solo un maestro podría haber creado un libro así».The SpectatorEn una colina sobre la ciudad medieval italiana de Ravello, al...

A Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction book of 2011A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction title for 2011On 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...

"A hugely entertaining book, one that brings a vanished theaterworld—and an era itself—miraculously back to life." —Moira Hodgson, The Wall Street JournalEllen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voiced merchant's clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic pres...

"A triumphant success. . . . His prose is confident, clear . . . occasionally perfect." —Dennis Potter, The Times (London)"It is impossible to suppose that this ‘Life' will ever be superseded . . . the best literary biography to appear for many years."—John Rothenstein, New York Times "Written with vivacity and scrupulousness. . . . [Michael Holroyd] has a great novelist's sense of the obstinate mystery of the human person."—George Steiner, Th...