A comical and poignant memoir of a gay man living life as he pleased in the 1930s In 1931, gay liberation was not a movement--it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to "come out" as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was harrassed, ridiculed and beaten. Nevertheless, he claimed his right to be himself--whatever the consequences. The Naked Civil Servant is both a comic masterpiece and a unique testament to the resilience of the human spirit. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading...
A comical and poignant memoir of a gay man living life as he pleased in the 1930s In 1931, gay liberation was not a movement--it was simply...
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 a distinguished biographer, but was never interested in exploring his own family's history until his parents died in the 1980s. Thi...
In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter's depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the...
In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of ...
In A Strange Eventful History, one of our greatest living biographers turns his attention to a gruop of history's most influential performers, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater.
Ellen Terry was ther era's most powerful actress. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted that he wrote her letters almost daily, but could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was a merchant's clerk who by force of will and wit became one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Irving and Terry...
In A Strange Eventful History, one of our greatest living biographers turns his attention to a gruop of history's most influential performer...
Mosaic is Holroyd's piecing together of these remarkable stories: the murder of the fearsome headmaster of his school; the discovery that his Swedish grandmother was the mistress of the French anarchist Jacques Prevert; and a letter about the beauty of his mother that provides a clue to a decade-long affair. Funny, touching, and wry, Mosaic shows how other people's lives, however eccentric or extreme, echo our own dreams and experiences.
Mosaic is Holroyd's piecing together of these remarkable stories: the murder of the fearsome headmaster of his school; the discovery that his...
A Time Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2011 A Seattle Times Best Book of 2011
On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters who move through Michael Holroyd's A Book of Secrets are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone and one man unite 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;...
A Time Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2011 A Seattle Times Best Book of 2011
On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sit...
Works on Paper is a selection by one of today's leading biographers from his lectures, essays, and reviews written over the last quarter of a century--mainly on the craft of biography and autobiography, but also covering what Michael Holroyd describes as his "enthusiasms and alibis." Opening with a startling attack on biography, which is answered by two essays on the ethics and values of non-fiction writing, the book goes on to examine the work of several contemporary biographers, the place of biography in fiction and of fiction in biography, and the revelations of some extravagant...
Works on Paper is a selection by one of today's leading biographers from his lectures, essays, and reviews written over the last quarter of a c...
