Cyril Connolly
The identical twins who captivated literary London
Intelligent and beautiful, Celia and Mamaine Paget were loved by some of the greatest writers of the interwar years, but remained uniquely devoted to each other
The many lives of George Weidenfeld, legendary publisher and ladies’ man
Born in a poor quarter of Vienna, the refugee took London by storm, married four times, survived financial ruin and died eulogised the world over
Barbara Ker-Seymer – Bright Young Person in the shadows
Though she photographed many society figures of the 1930s, Ker-Seymer lacked ambition and remains largely unknown – as she herself seems to have wanted
How two literary magazines boosted morale during the Blitz
William Loxley’s lively account of ‘Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon magazine’ begins with W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrating to…
Hell — and heaven – on the French Riviera
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the…
The sight of blue hydrangeas brings out the worst in Henri Cole
This new book, from the NYRB’s publishing arm, is in a non-fiction genre I love: short entries dedicated to an…
A sensual Greek goddess
Joan Leigh Fermor died in 2003, aged 91, after falling in her bathroom in the house on a rocky headland…
His own worst enemy
One fail-safe test of a writer’s reputation is to see how many times his or her books get taken out…
The Outsider — from the viewpoint of the victim’s family
In 1975 the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, in a lecture at the University of Massachusetts, identified Joseph Conrad’s Heart of…
The Mad Boy, Peter Watson, Cecil Beaton and the limo — by Sofka Zinovieff
It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…
A Stone in the Shade, by Violet Powell - review
Evelyn Waugh once recalled the anguish with which he greeted Edith Sitwell’s announcement that ‘Mr Waugh, you may call me…
