Mad World by Paula Byrne
A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of Englands greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited.‘Completely brilliant, compulsively readable, stunningly researched…This is the future of literary biography’ Mark Amory
‘A marvellous book, warm, witty, and enormously readable…It’s a mad world, my masters, and this book is a calm pool of sanity among the tumult of massed humanity’ Philip Womack, Daily Telegraph
‘[Paula Byrne] tells the tale with great verve and considerable insight…vigorous and original…she paints a vivid picture of the double standards and hypocrisy of the time.…readable and lively’ Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph
‘If the Waugh who emerges from this book is as snobbish as he ever was, he is more than this, too: loyal, bisexual…, the funniest man alive and the best friend you could ever have. Byrne’s gift as a writer is her ability to combine scholarship with turbo-driven narrative power. “Mad World” is vibrant, absorbing, stranger than fiction.’ Frances Wilson, Sunday Times
"this marvellous book…As well as showing his irrepressible sense of fun, Paula Byrne makes undeniable the warmth, loyalty and complexity of Waugh himself" Country Life
"well-researched…Byrne has trawled all possible archives assiduously" The Independent
"As Paula Byrne's new take on Waugh and the Brideshead myth so vividly shows, new names can now be named….fascianting" Mail on Sunday
Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool, where she is a Research Fellow in English Literature. Her first book, “Jane Austen and the Theatre”, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize. Her second book, “Perdita”, was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, she lives in Warwickshire with her three young children and her husband, the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780007243761 |
| ISBN 10 | 0007243766 |
| Title | Mad World |
| Author | Paula Byrne |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2009-08-20 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |