A Book Of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

By Michael Holroyd

A BOOK OF SECRETS is a masterfully atmospheric treasure-trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements and family mysteries. Acclaimed biographer Michael Holroyd peers into dusty corners to bring a company of unknown women into the light; Alice Keppel was the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; Eve Fairfax was Lord Grimthorpe's abandoned fiancée and sometime muse of Auguste Rodin; and the novelist Violet Trefusis was the lover of Vita Sackville-West. Taking the reader on a journey of discovery from Ravello to Paris, from Kirkstall Grange in Yorkshire to Vita Sackville-West's home at Knole, A Book of Secrets lucidly gives voice to fragile human connections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781784971434

Michael Holroyd

Besides the biographies of Augustus John, Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey, Michael Holroyd has written two volumes of memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. He was president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2003 - 2008 and is the only non-fiction writer to have been awarded the British Literature Prize. He lives in London and Somerset with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

Reviews for A Book Of Secrets

[gayla.bassham · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting in parts, but strangely organized and told in a way that makes it very easy to lose track of who's who. Well-written, of course.

[lexmccall · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a very bizarre biography of sorts. It seemed like the author changed the goal of the book between the first chapter and the last, and I'm still not certain what it was to begin with.
The highlight (to me) is the bust of Medusa that Vita Sackville-West gives her lover Violet as a wedding gift, and that it did not signal the end of their relationship. That detail alone warrants 3 stars.

[chrissterry_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I very much enjoyed the earlier part of this book, centring around the life and various loves of Ernest Beckett, 2nd Lord Grimthorpe. It was a glittering tangle of mysteries and infidelities. In these ‘Google’ days I was able to follow up references and was fascinated by the vignettes of fashionable life illustrated by José Dale-Lace in South Africa. The portrait of José is particularly fine.All roads seem to lead to Villa Cimbrone, and Holroyd, of course, travels there. The description of his visit with Catherine Till brings those mysteries of the past into a new, and current focus.Seven years later he invited back to the Villa Cimbrone by Tiziana Masucci. Chapter Five, ‘Excitements, Earthquakes and Elopements’ continues the autobiographical theme, as Tiziana’s own absorption with Violet Trefussis is explored. From then on, however, the book seemed to me to lose its focus, and to descend into yet another episode of the long-running and oft explored Vita-Violet (+Virginia) saga—albeit seen heavily from Violet’s point of view.One expects that all this will lead back, in some way, to the Villa Cimbrone, but it really doesn’t. The Villa makes a fleeting, and rather token appearance, in the Epilogue, but only as a symbol, and one very loosely connected to Violet herself.Lady Sackville and Mrs Keppel might almost be seen as unifying characters in this book, sailing like imperious galleons, getting closer and closer to the waterline as the book progresses, until, with little ceremony, they sink.