Changes

|title=A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

|sort=Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers

|publisher=Vintage Books

|date=November 2011

|summary=A treasure trove of hidden lives, family mysteries and uncelebrated achievements.

}}

The Guardian reported recently, ''Biography is a genre in crisis, according to perhaps Britain's best-known biographer, the author of highly acclaimed works on Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and George Bernard Shaw.'' In particular literary biography, he feels has been superseded by the myriad forms of the internet and other popular entertainments. Holroyd says that this is his last book. However, here he is once again energised by the whole process of searching archives and reconstructs the cultivated, privileged and mostly civilised society back to the early Edwardians. In measured, wry and sympathetic tones he takes the reader into the luxuriant and variegated gardens of the past. He finds time to discuss the role of imagination in the art of biography. In this finely written book he carefully spreads enlightenment as he carefully distinguishes between guesswork, probability and established facts.

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