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"A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."—Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book Review Renowned 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 eccentric characters: a slow decline from English nobility on one side, a dramatic Scandinavian ancestry on the other. Fires, suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, unconsummated longings, and the rumor of an Indian tea fortune permeate this wry, candid memoir, "part multiple biography, part autobiography, but principally an oblique investigation of the biographer's art" (New York Times Book Review). "[A] perfect example of a memoir that entrances me."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "[O]ne of the few [biographers] who can convey what makes ordinary as well as extraordinary mortals live in our minds."—Los Angeles Times
Michael Holroyd is a distinguished biographer, but was never interested in exploring his own family's history until his parents died in the 1980s. This encouraged him to find out more about his parents, their stories, and their origins.
Michael Holroyd is one of the finest biographers of our time yet he wasn't interested in exploring his own family's history until the death of his parents.'Basil Street Blues' is part detective story, part family memoir & part an oblique voyage of self-discovery. In his follow-up volume, 'Mosaic', he delves deeper into his family history.
Eustace is the undisputed patriarch of the Farquhar family--that is, he would be if everyone left him alone so he could get on with things, like shaving, and finding his way downstairs. It's not Henry's fault that he snores and that his marriage has collapsed. Or that he failed to get into the cricket team. But he has made up for it and is now a faster motorist than ever he was a bowler. He is a good father too, and one day, when he wakes up from day-dreaming, his son Kenneth will thank him. It is good that Anne sleeps with a whistle in her mouth--how else could she terrify the burglars? As for Mathilda, she wold love to like her mother, but prefers going for long walks with the dog. But what will happen to them all if the dog dies? The story is followed by a devastating postscript. Placing this eccentric family in isolation after two world wars and at the beginning of our aggressive financial culture, it turns comedy into tragedy. A Dog's Life marked a very personal addition to Michael Holroyd's remarkable career.
“Blowin' the Blues Away makes a major contribution to our understanding of the contexts and meanings of jazz performance. Jackson makes his own mark by not only documenting 'the jazz scene' in New York but also by providing a critical vocabulary and methodology for future researchers. As such, Jackson’s book provides the most in-depth understanding of the rituals and meanings of jazz performance to date." —Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever
Holroyd pieces together several remarkable stories to create a wry, touching mosaic of his family, including the murder of his fearsome headmaster and the discovery that his Swedish grandmother was the mistress of a French anarchist.
From Soho to Westminster Abbey, all the sights of London are covered in this up-to-date guide. Packed with travel tips, essential local contacts, and historical background, this handbook is indispensable for travelers of all budgets. Full color.
Based on the bestselling Oxford Companion to English Literature, this is an indispensable, compact guide to all aspects of English literature. Over 5,500 new and revised A to Z entries give unrivalled coverage of writers, works, historical context, literary theory, allusions, characters, and plot summaries. Discursive feature entries supply a wealth of information about important genres in literature. For this fourth edition, the dictionary has been fully revised and updated to include expanded coverage of postcolonial, African, black British, and children's literature, as well as improved representation in the areas of science fiction, biography, travel literature, women's writing, gay and lesbian writing, and American literature. The appendices listing literary prize winners, including the Nobel, Man Booker, and Pulitzer prizes, have all been updated and there is also a timeline, chronicling the development of English literature from c. 1000 to the present day. Many entries feature recommended web links, which are listed and regularly updated on a dedicated companion website. Written originally by a team of more than 140 distinguished authors and extensively updated for this new edition, this book provides an essential point of reference for English students, teachers, and all other readers of literature in English.