Ancestors in the Attic by Michael Holroyd

Ancestors in the Attic by Michael Holroyd

Michael Holroyd, perhaps the most distinguished of contemporary biographers, has in recent years turned his attention to the stories hidden within his own fascinating (not to say eccentric) family. In Ancestors in the Attic he teases out two especially intriguing episodes, the tales of his great-grandmother and his aunt: which he categorizes respectively as tragedy and comedy. As well as telling their stories in words, he does it visually, through two very different collections made by the women, which he discovered, long after their deaths, in the attic of a house in Maidenhead: the ferns preserved and stitched into beautiful, intricate patterns by his tragic great-grandmother in the 1870s; and the photographs of silent movie actors collected by his lively young aunt in the 1920s. This handsome cloth-bound boxed set contains two volumes - My Great Grandmother's Book of Ferns and My Aunt's Book of Silent Actors - and is a delightful celebration of the appeal of collecting, as well as a fascinating record of a unique family history.

"Offered almost as religious texts, one is a beautifully pressed collection of ferns made by his great-grandmother in India in the mid-19th century; the second is a series of photographs of silent-movie stars gathered by his aunt Yolanda in the 1920sThrough these images Holroyd unravels the lives, tragic and comic, behind these strangely magical and peculiar assemblies."

 

* Observer *

Sir Michael Holroyd CBE FRHistS FRSL is the author of celebrated biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, Bernard Shaw, Ellen Terry, and others. His awards include the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the David Cohen British Literature Prize, the Golden PEN award, the Heywood Hill Literary Prize, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Irish Life Arts Award and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award. His two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic, have been widely praised. Michael Holroyd lives in London, W10.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781910258842
ISBN 10	1910258849
Title	Ancestors in the Attic
Author	Michael Holroyd
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Gemini Books Group Ltd
Year published	2017-10-26
Number of pages	120
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.