Curious Friendship

The Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing

AvAnna Thomasson

E-bok

Engelska, 2015

252 kr

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Beskrivning

I loved A Curious Friendship. Anna Thomasson, in her first book, has brilliantly captured this strange coterie.' Sir Roy StrongThe winter of 1924: Edith Olivier, alone for the first time at the age of 51, thought her life had come to an end. For Rex Whistler, a 19-year-old art student, life was just beginning. They were to start an intimate and unlikely friendship that would transform their lives. Gradually Edith's world opened up and she became a writer. Her home, the Daye House, in a wooded corner of the Wilton estate, became a sanctuary for Whistler and the other brilliant and beautiful younger men of her circle: among them Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Tennant, William Walton, John Betjeman, the Sitwells and Cecil Beaton - for whom she was 'all the muses'. The story is set against the backdrop of a period that spanned the madcap parties of the 1920s, the sophistication of the 1930s and the drama and austerity of the Second World War. With an extraordinary cast of friends and acquaintances, from the Royal Family to Tallulah Bankhead, Anna Thomasson's A Curious Friendship brings to life, for the first time, the curious, unlikely and fascinating friendship of a bluestocking and a bright young thing.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2015-03-26
Språk:Engelska
Filformat:EPUB
Kopieringsskydd:LCP
ISBN:9781447245551
Förlag:Pan Macmillan

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Mer om författaren

Anna Thomasson studied for an M Phil in Biography at the University of Buckingham and her thesis was shortlisted for the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize. She lives in London and this is her first book.

Recensioner i media

A Curious Friendship tells the story of two wonderfully unlikely friends and allies during the years between the wars. Moving, thoughtful, entertaining and magnificently researched, Thomasson's account of a bohemian art student and sharp-witted - sometimes comically snobbish - spinster is an outstandingly accomplished and original first biography from a writer for whom we can predict a very bright future. -- Miranda Seymour Anna Thomasson has uncovered a remarkable story and brings these two fascinating but forgotten figures and their brilliant world vividly to light. An impressive debut. -- Julie Kavanagh A vibrant, admirably researched debut, tinkling with famous artistic names. A sort of non-fictional Brideshead Revisited, it's piquantly evocative of that lost aesthetic echelon of 1920s & 1930s society which dissolved amid the shadows of war; and the convention-defying friendship threaded through it is enthralling. -- Caroline Sanderson Anna Thomasson is a wonderful writer, with a pitch-perfect ear and a marvellous sense of style. I was also impressed by the thoroughness of her research. I really felt she had come to know her characters intimately with the result that one completely trusted her judgment every inch of the way. She has, too, a brilliant visual sense so that one really sees Rex's paintings and those magnificent houses. -- Selina Hastings

Innehållsförteckning

Section - i: List of Illustrations Section - ii: Introduction Unit - 1: BEFORE Chapter - 1: Edith Chapter - 2: Rex Chapter - 3: Rex Unit - 2: THE LOVE CHILD Chapter - 1: San Remo Chapter - 2: The Daye House Chapter - 3: 'At The Shrine of Beauty' Chapter - 4: The Darling Chapter - 5: A 'Dream Change' Unit - 3: TABLEAUX VIVANTS Chapter - 6: Bright Young People Chapter - 7: Town and Country Chapter - 8: Revels Chapter - 9: 'Adored Sons' Chapter - 10: Bird Songs Chapter - 11: Krol Dudziarz Chapter - 12: 'The Trail of the Serpent' Chapter - 13: 'Bells at Midnight' Unit - 4: REVERSIBLE FACES Chapter - 14: Moonraking Chapter - 15: Ashcombe Chapter - 16: 'Peintre de Luxe' Chapter - 17: The 'Storm Touched Soul' Chapter - 18: 'The Happy Heartbreak' Chapter - 19: Sex Unit - 5: LANDSCAPES Chapter - 20: Distance Chapter - 21: An 'Eventful Year' Chapter - 22: La Belle Dame Chapter - 23: 'Out of Ordinary' Chapter - 24: 'Another Season' Unit - 6: PAINTING FROM LIFE Chapter - 25: Commission Chapter - 26: 'The Conditional' Chapter - 27: Home Chapter - 28: 'In The Long Ago' Chapter - 29: Action Unit - 7: AFTER Chapter - 30: 'The Loving Spirit' Chapter - 31: Legacies Acknowledgements - iii: Acknowledgements Section - iv: Notes Section - v: Select Bibliography Index - vi: Index