Alethea Hayter was born in Cairo in 1911, where her father was a legal advisor to the Egyptian government. After his death when she was 12, the family returned to England in reduced circumstances, but Hayer won a scholarship to study History at Oxford in 1929. She became a journalist before being recruited as a 'demi-semi-spook' by the Postal Censorship department during the war; she was then posted to Greece, Paris and Belgium with the British Council. Hayter's first book, Mrs Browning (1962), won that year's Royal Society of Literature Award. It was followed by the much-admired A Sultry Month (1965), Opium and the Romantic Imagination (1968), Horatio's Version (1972), A Voyage in Vain (1973) and The Wreck of the Abergavenny (2002). Hayter was appointed OBE in 1970 and died in 2006, aged 94.Francesca Wade has written for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, Paris Review, Guardian, New Statesman, Frieze and Prospect. She has been the editor of the White Review and is a recipient of a Robert B Silvers Grant for Work in Progress and a 2020-21 Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Her first book, Square Haunting, was a group biography of five trailblazing interwar women, longlisted for the Baille Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her next book is Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.

'Hayter's clever, innovative book turned a searchlight on a time, a place, a circle of people; it has surely inspired the subsequent fashion for group biographies.' Penelope Lively'Nothing I've ever read has flung me so immediately into those streets, that weather, that period. Hayter never forgets that people want stories, that lives are stories.' Margaret Forster'Hayter could take a tiny chip of life [and] find within it the seeds of a whole existence.' Richard Holmes'A pioneer . . . Beautifully written vignettes . . . Immaculate scholarship and intense readability.' Jonathan Bate'Outstanding . . . A small masterpiece.' Anthony Burgess

Alethea Hayter was born in Cairo in 1911, where her father was a legal advisor to the Egyptian government. After his death when she was 12, the family returned to England in reduced circumstances, but Hayer won a scholarship to study History at Oxford in 1929. She became a journalist before being recruited as a 'demi-semi-spook' by the Postal Censorship department during the war; she was then posted to Greece, Paris and Belgium with the British Council. Hayter's first book, Mrs Browning (1962), won that year's Royal Society of Literature Award. It was followed by the much-admired A Sultry Month (1965), Opium and the Romantic Imagination (1968), Horatio's Version (1972), A Voyage in Vain (1973) and The Wreck of the Abergavenny (2002). Hayter was appointed OBE in 1970 and died in 2006, aged 94.Francesca Wade has written for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, Paris Review, Guardian, New Statesman, Frieze and Prospect. She has been the editor of the White Review and is a recipient of a Robert B Silvers Grant for Work in Progress and a 2020-21 Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Her first book, Square Haunting, was a group biography of five trailblazing interwar women, longlisted for the Baille Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her next book is Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.

'Hayter's clever, innovative book turned a searchlight on a time, a place, a circle of people; it has surely inspired the subsequent fashion for group biographies.' Penelope Lively'Nothing I've ever read has flung me so immediately into those streets, that weather, that period. Hayter never forgets that people want stories, that lives are stories.' Margaret Forster'Hayter could take a tiny chip of life [and] find within it the seeds of a whole existence.' Richard Holmes'A pioneer . . . Beautifully written vignettes . . . Immaculate scholarship and intense readability.' Jonathan Bate'Outstanding . . . A small masterpiece.' Anthony Burgess

Alethea Hayter was born in Cairo in 1911, where her father was a legal advisor to the Egyptian government. After his death when she was 12, the family returned to England in reduced circumstances, but Hayer won a scholarship to study History at Oxford in 1929. She became a journalist before being recruited as a 'demi-semi-spook' by the Postal Censorship department during the war; she was then posted to Greece, Paris and Belgium with the British Council. Hayter's first book, Mrs Browning (1962), won that year's Royal Society of Literature Award. It was followed by the much-admired A Sultry Month (1965), Opium and the Romantic Imagination (1968), Horatio's Version (1972), A Voyage in Vain (1973) and The Wreck of the Abergavenny (2002). Hayter was appointed OBE in 1970 and died in 2006, aged 94.Francesca Wade has written for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, Paris Review, Guardian, New Statesman, Frieze and Prospect. She has been the editor of the White Review and is a recipient of a Robert B Silvers Grant for Work in Progress and a 2020-21 Fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Her first book, Square Haunting, was a group biography of five trailblazing interwar women, longlisted for the Baille Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her next book is Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife.

'Hayter's clever, innovative book turned a searchlight on a time, a place, a circle of people; it has surely inspired the subsequent fashion for group biographies.' Penelope Lively'Nothing I've ever read has flung me so immediately into those streets, that weather, that period. Hayter never forgets that people want stories, that lives are stories.' Margaret Forster'Hayter could take a tiny chip of life [and] find within it the seeds of a whole existence.' Richard Holmes'A pioneer . . . Beautifully written vignettes . . . Immaculate scholarship and intense readability.' Jonathan Bate'Outstanding . . . A small masterpiece.' Anthony Burgess