A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families

Description

'All theatre enthusiasts are indebted to Henry Irving and Ellen Terry- and now also to Michael Holroyd for bringing their families back to dazzling life' - Sir Ian McKellen Henry Irving - a merchant's clerk who became the saviour of British theatre - and Ellen Terry, who made her first theatre appearance as soon as she could walk, were the king and queen of the Victorian stage. Creatively interdependent, they founded a power-house of arts at the Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker as business manager, where they recast Shakespeare's plays on an epic scale and took the company on lucrative and exhilarating international tours. In his masterly new biography, award-winning writer Michael Holroyd explores their public and private lives, showing how their artistic legacy and their brilliant but troubled children came to influence the modern world.

Besides the biographies of Augustus John, Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey (which was filmed as Carrington), Michael Holroyd has written two volumes of memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. He was president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2003 - 2008 and is the only non-fiction writer to have been awarded the British Literature Prize. He lives in London and Somerset with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

"Holroyd has a wonderful eye for detail...an entirely captivating biography...one of the glories of the form" Guardian "It has all the tumbling narrative, spicy detail and easy empathy that determine his midas touch... shows Holroyd yet again pushing the biographer's art to new imaginative planes" Financial Times "Magnificent - not just as a fascinating exercise in group biography, but as a masterpiece of comic writing...such joie de vivre" New Statesman "This is a fabulous cavalcade of a book, written with infectious verve and deep imaginative sympathy ... a joy to read" -- John Carey Sunday Times "Michael Holroyd has once again triumphed over a seemingly impossible subject. For so capacious is this tale of two great actors and their descendants that he has written a sweeping social history of theatre in the late 19th and early 20th-century England. Deftly plotted, with an infectious verve that springs from his delight in the waywardness of human nature" -- Frances Spalding Independent