A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

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On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello stands the Villa Cimbrone ??? a place of fantasyand make-believe. The characters that move through Michael Holroyd???s new book aredestined never to meet ??? they lived through different eras and reside in differentcountries. Yet the Villa Cimbrone unites them all. A Book of Secrets is a treasure-trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements andfamily mysteries. Michael Holroyd peers into dusty corners to bring a company ofunknown women into the light. Their lives are fluid and vulnerable ??? they play the role ofmistress, fianc??e, or muse ??? and always somehow illegitimate. From Alice Keppel,themistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe (owner of the Villa Cimbrone) and the Princeof Wales; Eve Fairfax, Lord Grimthorpe???s abandoned fianc??e and sometime muse ofAuguste Rodin; and finally, to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-Westin one of the most scandalous love affairs of the early twentieth-century: these womenare always on the periphery of the respectable world. Also on the periphery is the elusive biographer, Michael Holroyd, who turns the spotlightupon himself as part of his investigations into the art of biography. Taking the reader on ajourney of discovery from Ravello to Paris, from Kirkstall Grange in Yorkshire to VitaSackville-West???s home at Knole, A Book of Secrets lucidly gives voice to fragile humanconnections.About the AuthorBesides the Lives of Augustus John, Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey (which was filmedas Carrington), Michael Holroyd has written two volumes of memoirs, Basil Street Bluesand Mosaic. His most recent book, A Strange Eventful History, winner of the James TaitBlack Prize, was a biography of two great theatrical dynasties which included HenryIrving, Ellen Terry, and her son Edward Gordon Craig. He has been president of the RoyalSociety of Literature and is the first non-fiction writer to have been awarded the BritishLiterature Prize. He lives in London and Somerset with his wife, the novelist MargaretDrabble.