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Pair – Basil Street Blues & The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley
Slightly Foxed Editions, Michael Holroyd Basil Street Blues
No. 33 Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard
Family Secrets: Michael Holroyd, Basil Street Blues & Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley
  • Dimensions: 110 x 170mm
  • Producer: Smith Settle
  • Genre: Memoir
  • Binding: Cloth hardback
  • Trimmings: Coloured endpapers; silk ribbon, head- & tailband; gold blocking to spine; blind blocking to front
  • NB: Hand-numbered limited editions of 2,000
Made in Britain

Pair – Basil Street Blues & The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley

Michael Holroyd, Diana Petre
From£34

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Family Secrets

Michael Holroyd, Basil Street Blues

Well-known for his frank biographies of such controversial figures as Augustus John and Lytton Strachey, Holroyd teases out the story of his own distinctly problematic family in
this delightful and original book. His volatile father, always busy with his own enterprises, and his glamorous Swedish mother with her succession of exotic husbands, had only walk-on parts in his life. It was only after both his parents had died that he was overcome by a desire to find the ‘connecting story’ which his fragmented childhood had so lacked. The result is a very personal detective story, subtle, funny and poignant.

Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley

Diana and her twin sisters grew up in Barnes, South London, in the care of an elderly housekeeper, having been abandoned in 1912 by their mother, the enigmatic Mrs Muriel Perry, whose real name and true identity were a mystery. After an absence of ten years, Muriel reappeared and took charge of her children, with disastrous results. For the girls, one of the highlights of their isolated lives were visits from a kindly man they knew as ‘Uncle Bodger’. In fact, as Muriel finally revealed in characteristically brutal fashion, he was their father, Roger Ackerley.



Hunt the Biographer

Michael Holroyd is the most distinguished biographer of his generation, chiefly on the strength of three monumental works – Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw, published between 1967...

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Evasions and Deceits

Among the small horde of papers Diana Petre left me as her literary executor when she died in 2001 was a folder labelled: ‘Excuses. Lies. Evasions. Deceits.’ I thought at first that it might...

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Lives and Letters

Most people do not encourage members of their family to become biographers. There is no telling what trouble they will get into. If you write fiction any member of your family who appears on the...

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