Eve Claxton – författare

Soon to be a major motion picture, from Brad Pitt and Tony KushnerA Washington Post Best Book of 2015A mid-century doctor''s raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter''s attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.             Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.       Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.From the Hardcover edition.

From childhood through to adulthood ­- if not necessarily maturity - The Book of Life offers the literary journal of a lifetime, in the company of the most fascinating and talented figures in history.From Alan Bennett's wartime childhood in Yorkshire to Mahatma Gandhi's experiment with cigarettes; Katherine Hepburn on her first acting job aged 21 and Primo Levi on being captured by Fascist militia at the same age; Darwin on his lifelong love - his work - and Nelson Mandela on his release from prison aged 71 ... life and living in all its manifold glories is represented.With insights that encompass generations and continents, this is a uniquely enjoyable immersion in some of the world's best, and most personal, writing.

'The heart-rending story of two beautiful and glamorous women, and the spirals of disaster into which one of their lives tumbled' Robert Lacey, The CrownNyna Giles, twenty-nine, was in the queue at the supermarket when she looked down and saw the headline 'Former Bridesmaid of Princess Grace Lives in Homeless Shelter'. Nyna was stunned; her family's private ordeal was front page news. The woman on that cover was her mother.The truth was, she barely knew who her mother had been before marriage. She knew Carolyn had been a model - arriving in New York in 1947, where she'd met the young Grace Kelly, and that the two had become fast friends. Nyna had seen the photos of her mother at Grace's wedding, wearing the bridesmaid gown that had hung in her closet for years. But how had the seemingly confident, glamorous woman in those pictures become the mother she knew growing up - the mother who told her she was too ill to go to school and kept her isolated at home?In her journey to uncover her mother's past Nyna relives a story as classic, familiar, dark and dangerous as any fairy tale.