Frances Partridge was one of the great British diarists of the 20th century. She was born in 1900, the daughter of a progressive mother and architect father whose friends included Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle. After studying Moral Sciences and English at Cambridge, Frances worked in Heywood Hill's Curzon Street bookshop inLondon and soon became part olf the Bloomsbury group encountering Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, the Bells, Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey and Ralph Partridge. She and Ralph fell in love and married in 1933. During WWII they were committed pacifists and opened their house, Ham Spray, to numerous waifs and strays of war. After it was over they enjoyed the happiest of times of their life together, entertaining friends such as E M Forster, Robert Kee and Duncan Grant. Frances' life changed abruptly with two sudden and unexpected deaths. Ralph had a heart attack in 1960 and three years later their only son, Burgo, died, aged 28 from a brain haemorrhage. 'I have utterly lost heart: I want no more of this cruel life,' Frances was to write later. However she survived, indeed prospered for another 40 decades, showing an astonishing appetite for life. Her diaries chronicle life from the 1930s. But this biography shows Frances also as other saw her.
Frances Partridge was one of the great British diarists of the 20th century. She was born in 1900, the daughter of a progressive mother and architect father whose friends included Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle. After studying Moral Sciences and English at Cambridge, Frances worked in Heywood Hill's Curzon Street bookshop inLondon and soon became part olf the Bloomsbury group encountering Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, the Bells, Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey and Ralph Partridge. She and Ralph fell in love and married in 1933. During WWII they were committed pacifists and opened their house, Ham Spray, to numerous waifs and strays of war. After it was over they enjoyed the happiest of times of their life together, entertaining friends such as E M Forster, Robert Kee and Duncan Grant. Frances' life changed abruptly with two sudden and unexpected deaths. Ralph had a heart attack in 1960 and three years later their only son, Burgo, died, aged 28 from a brain haemorrhage. 'I have utterly lost heart: I want no more of this cruel life,' Frances was to write later. However she survived, indeed prospered for another 40 decades, showing an astonishing appetite for life. Her diaries chronicle life from the 1930s. But this biography shows Frances also as other saw her.
Frances Partridge's many volumes of published diaries have a wide following Anne Chisholm was allowed complete access to unpublished diaries, to letters and the Partridge papers Expect broadsheet serial on publication TV documentary in discussion
Anne Chisholm is the author of a biography of Nancy Cunard and FACES OF HIROSHIMA, a book about the Hiroshima Maidens. With Michael Davie she wrote BEAVERBROOK: A LIFE (1992). She was a close friend of Frances Partridge during the last years of her life. She reviews widely and is the current chairman of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in Belsize Park, London, NW3 and Ewelme, Oxfordshire.
"Anne Chisholm's book promises to be the best kind of biography - intimate and particular, but with a watchful eye on the larger picture" -- Kathryn Hughes THE GUARDIAN "an outstanding biography, intelligent, sympathetic and beautifully written" -- Selina Hastings STANDPOINT "an impressively sure-footed biography and the necessary complement to the published diaries" -- Frances Spalding LITERARY REVIEW Book of the Week: "Anne Chisholm could not have presented her life better" -- David Sexton EVENING STANDARD "Chisholm triumphantly brings Ralph to life on the page, so that we appreciate why the man was so loved by Frances, by Lytton and, briefly, by Carrington" -- Paul Levy THE OBSERVER "It is Anne Chisholm's remarkable achievement to reveal her fully as the extraordinarily strong and attractive person that she was." -- Diana Athill THE GUARDIAN "Anne Chisholm's admiration and even love for her subject infuses but does not distort this deft and touching biography" -- Caroline Moore SUNDAY TELEGRAPH "Anne Chisholm has produced a worthy tribute to the woman often dubbed 'the last survivor of Bloomsbury'". -- Mark Bostridge INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY "The book I most enjoyed reading last week was Anne Chisholm's forthcoming biography of the Bloomsbury diarist Frances Partridge" -- D J Taylor INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY "This is an absorbing, vivid and elegant account of a life concerned as much with love and friendship as the bold experiments of Bloomsbury" -- Matthew Dennison DAILY TELEGRAPH "Anne Chisholm could not have presented her better" -- David Sexton THE SCOTSMAN "Sympathetic, psychologically astute and notable well-written" -- D J Taylor THE INDEPENDENT "As well as the central character, she has managed to give a remarkable overview of Old Bloomsbury" -- John Saumarez Smith COUNTRY LIFE "We do genuinely want to follow her right through to the end of her long life, and end up grateful for knowing her so well" -- Diana Athill THE BROWN BOOK, LMH COLLEGE, OXFORD
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