Brief Lives: Twentieth-century Pen Portraits from the "Dictionary of National Biography"

by Colin Matthew (Editor)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1997

  $3.31

  Drawn from the archives of The Dictionary of National Biography , this collection offers nearly 200 sharply drawn profiles of the men and women who have helped shape British national life this century. Full of insight and wit, and often surprisingly frank, these vignettes provide definitive portraits of their subjects by people who knew them personally. Writers, artists, and musicians rub shoulders with scientists, industrialists, politicians, and soldiers in this highly readable celebration of national endeavour and achievement. From Laura Ashley to Evelyn Waugh, Tony Hancock to Bertrand Russell, this volume offers some of the riches of The Dictionary of National Biography in a single volume. One of the delights of this entertaining anthology is that many of the mini-biographies are written by people who themselves are prominent in public life and who write from personal knowledge of their subjects. Discover Kingsley Amis on Sir John Betjeman, Stephen Spender on W.H. Auden, Ian Gilmour on R.A. Butler, Richard Ellmann on T.S. Eliot, Alan Bennett on Russell Harty, and David Cecil on Virginia Woolf.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $11.15

  Drawn from the archives of The Dictionary of National Biography and collected here in a single volume, Brief Lives consists of 150 sharply drawn profiles of the men and women who have helped shape British national life in the 20th century. From Harry Lauder to Jacqueline du Pre, W.H. Auden to the Duchess of Windsor, these profiles combine insight with prose, anecdote with private information. Discover Kingley Amis on Sir John Betjeman; Michael Kitson on Sir Anthony Blunt; Stephen Spender on W.H. Auden; Richard Ellmann on T.S. Eliot; Yehudi Menuhin on Jacqueline du Pre; Alan Bennett on Russell Harty; Donald Trelfold on Sir Len Hutton; and David Cecil on Virginia Woolf.