A Book of Secrets Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters that move through Michael Holroyd's new book are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone and one man unites them all. This elegiac work is about the quest of unearthing and recounting the stories of women always on the periphery of the respectable world - from Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West. Also on the margins is the elusive biographer, who on occasion turns an appraising eye upon himself as part of his investigations in the maze of biography.

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

Book of Secrets, A
PART IAcknowledgementsI am particularly grateful to my two dedicatees, Tiziana Masucci and Catherine Till, who guided me so sympathetically and with such perseverance during the long, interrupted quest that grew into this book.Others who have helped me include Vivien Allen, Lucy Beckett, the late Sir Martyn Beckett, Michael Berry, Mary Rose Blacker, Simon Blow, Virginia Charteris, Judy Collingwood, Douglas Croft, Peter Dench, Charles Dodsworth, Paul Evans, the late Fiona Fairfax, James Fergusson, the Rev. Sir Timothy Forbes-Adams, Ken Giggal, Victoria Glendinning, the late Christopher Grimthorpe, Marion J. Hare, Felicity Harrison, Marjorie Harrison, Frances Holt, David Hughes, the late Lady Serena James, Judith Landry, Helen Langdon, Rupert Lycett-Green, Adam Nicolson, the late Nigel Nicolson, Suzanne O'Farrell, Roger Packham, John Phillips, the late Georgina Ratcliffe, David S. Rymer, Harvey Sachs, Anne Sidamon-Eristoff, the late Sir Reresby Sitwell, Diana Souhami, Alexander and Serena Sparks, Jean Strouse, Hugo Vickers, Gore Vidal, Giorgio Vuilleumier, Jane Wellesley, Ursula and David Westbury.I am also indebted to the following libraries, galleries and institutions: Eton College Library (archivist Penelope Hatfield), Fairfax House(Peter Brown), Johannesburg Art Gallery (Jillian Carman, Eleanor Lorimer and Thembinkosi Mabaso), Leeds Metropolitan Library (Professor Lori Beckett), The Retreat at York (chief executive Derek Thomson), Tate Library and Archive, Millbank (Lisa Cole, Gallery Records Assistant Curator, and John Langdon), City of York Library Service (local studies librarian Amanda Howard) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (Marjorie Trusted, deputy custodian, sculpture department, and Linda Lloyd-Jones).I would like to thank Caradoc King and Robert Lescher, my British and American literary agents, for having steered the text so tenderly towards publication. The book has benefited from the enterprise of my publisher Clara Farmer and the scrutiny of my editor Juliet Brooke at Chatto & Windus; also from the attention and encouragement of Jonathan Galassi and Courtney Hodell at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I am grateful to the eagle-eyed copy-editor Ilsa Yardley for saving me from various humiliations, and for the work of my jacket designer Nayon Cho.Finally I thank Margaret, my wife, for her patience and incredulous encouragement.Copyright © 2010 by Michael Holroyd