A Curious Friendship - The Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing

'Anna Thomasson is a wonderful writer, with a pitch-perfect ear and a marvellous sense of style. She knows her characters intimately with the result that one completely trusts her judgment every inch of the way.' Selina Hastings, author of The Red Earl and The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
'A vibrant, admirably researched debut. A non-fictional Brideshead Revisited, it is piquantly evocative of that lost aesthetic echelon of 1920s and 1930s society which dissolved amid the shadows of war; and the convention-defying friendship threaded through it is enthralling.' Caroline Sanderson, writer, reviewer and Associate Editor of the Bookseller
'Moving, thoughtful, entertaining and magnificently researched account of a bohemian art student and a sharp-witted - sometimes comically snobbish - spinster, this is an outstandingly accomplished and original first biography from a writer for whom we can predict a very bright future.' Miranda Seymour, author of In My Father's House and Noble Endeavours

List of contents

• • Section - i: List of Illustrations
  • Section - ii: Introduction
• Unit - 1: BEFORE
• Chapter - 1: Edith
• Chapter - 2: Rex
• Chapter - 3: Rex
• Unit - 2: THE LOVE CHILD
• Chapter - 1: San Remo
• Chapter - 2: The Daye House
• Chapter - 3: 'At The Shrine of Beauty'
• Chapter - 4: The Darling
• Chapter - 5: A 'Dream Change'
• Unit - 3: TABLEAUX VIVANTS
• Chapter - 6: Bright Young People
• Chapter - 7: Town and Country
• Chapter - 8: Revels
• Chapter - 9: 'Adored Sons'
• Chapter - 10: Bird Songs
• Chapter - 11: Krol Dudziarz
• Chapter - 12: 'The Trail of the Serpent'
• Chapter - 13: 'Bells at Midnight'
• Unit - 4: REVERSIBLE FACES
• Chapter - 14: Moonraking
• Chapter - 15: Ashcombe
• Chapter - 16: 'Peintre de Luxe'
• Chapter - 17: The 'Storm Touched Soul'
• Chapter - 18: 'The Happy Heartbreak'
• Chapter - 19: Sex
• Unit - 5: LANDSCAPES
• Chapter - 20: Distance
• Chapter - 21: An 'Eventful Year'
• Chapter - 22: La Belle Dame
• Chapter - 23: 'Out of Ordinary'
• Chapter - 24: 'Another Season'
• Unit - 6: PAINTING FROM LIFE
• Chapter - 25: Commission
• Chapter - 26: 'The Conditional'
• Chapter - 27: Home
• Chapter - 28: 'In The Long Ago'
• Chapter - 29: Action
• Unit - 7: AFTER
• Chapter - 30: 'The Loving Spirit'
• Chapter - 31: Legacies
• • Acknowledgements - iii: Acknowledgements
  • Section - iv: Notes
  • Section - v: Select Bibliography
  • Index - vi: Index

About the author

Anna Thomasson studied for an M Phil in Biography at the University of Buckingham and her thesis was shortlisted for the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize. She lives in London and this is her first book.

Summary

The winter of 1924: Edith Olivier, alone for the first time at the age of fifty-one, thought her life had come to an end. For Rex Whistler, a nineteen-year-old art student, life was just beginning. Together, they embarked on an intimate and unlikely friendship that would transform their lives. Gradually Edith's world opened up and she became a writer. Her home, the Daye House, in a wooded corner of the Wilton estate, became a sanctuary for Whistler and the other brilliant and beautiful younger men of her circle: among them Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Tennant, William Walton, John Betjeman, the Sitwells and Cecil Beaton - for whom she was 'all the muses'.
Set against a backdrop of the madcap parties of the 1920s, the sophistication of the 1930s and the drama and austerity of the Second World War and with an extraordinary cast of friends and acquaintances, Anna Thomasson brings to life, for the first time, the fascinating, and curious, friendship of a bluestocking and a bright young thing.

Foreword

A vivid and moving account of the remarkable relationship between the writer Edith Olivier and the young artist Rex Whistler

Additional text

Anna Thomasson is a wonderful writer, with a pitch-perfect ear and a marvellous sense of style. I was also impressed by the thoroughness of her research. I really felt she had come to know her characters intimately with the result that one completely trusted her judgment every inch of the way. She has, too, a brilliant visual sense so that one really sees Rex's paintings and those magnificent houses.

Product details

• Authors: Anna Thomasson, THOMASSON ANNA
• Publisher: Macmillan
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: from age 18
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 26.03.2015
• EAN: 9781447245537
• ISBN: 978-1-4472-4553-7
• No. of pages: 432
• Dimensions: 165 mm x 243 mm x 50 mm
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies