Have just finished reading a biography of Iris Origo by Caroline Moorhead.
I can't remember what made me buy this book. Iris Origo's War in the Val d'Orcia is on my list of books to read. Also in the biography I found a tiny clipping from the Guardian in which Hilary Spurling recommends it as one of the best reads of the year.
Actually the book is very dull and I was bored by it almost all the way through.
Iris Origo's mother Sybil was the model for Aldous Huxley's Mrs Aldwinkle in Those Barren Leaves, and there are hints of her frightfulness in the biography. But Caroline Moorhead has been so discreet in this biography that it is impenetrable. Perhaps Caroline Moorehead was afraid of offending people.
We are told that Iris Origo was a good conversationalist, a perceptive thinker, an apparent paragon of virtue. But we are just told these things and no examples are given. From the evidence we are presented with it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that these were just rich people who were idle to the point of laziness (there is a person called Elsa who spends her life sitting in an armchair, mystifyingly lauded for her qualities of "friendship").
Even allowing for Caroline Moorhead's tact and decorum these were awful people, selfish and self-obsessed and blighted by wealth.
Above: Hilary Spurling bigging-up the work of Caroline Moorhead in one of those formulaic best books of the last year fillers that get stuck into the review sections of newspapers every December (don't trust these micro reviews, they are just authors helping out their friends - at your expense).
Above: the best part of the Iris Origo biography is the last page. In these two paragraphs Caroline Moorehead has dropped all her sense of reverential tact and is describing things she can see. The book would have been much better if she had not been in so much awe of its subject.
I can't remember what made me buy this book. Iris Origo's War in the Val d'Orcia is on my list of books to read. Also in the biography I found a tiny clipping from the Guardian in which Hilary Spurling recommends it as one of the best reads of the year.
Actually the book is very dull and I was bored by it almost all the way through.
Iris Origo's mother Sybil was the model for Aldous Huxley's Mrs Aldwinkle in Those Barren Leaves, and there are hints of her frightfulness in the biography. But Caroline Moorhead has been so discreet in this biography that it is impenetrable. Perhaps Caroline Moorehead was afraid of offending people.
We are told that Iris Origo was a good conversationalist, a perceptive thinker, an apparent paragon of virtue. But we are just told these things and no examples are given. From the evidence we are presented with it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that these were just rich people who were idle to the point of laziness (there is a person called Elsa who spends her life sitting in an armchair, mystifyingly lauded for her qualities of "friendship").
Even allowing for Caroline Moorhead's tact and decorum these were awful people, selfish and self-obsessed and blighted by wealth.
Above: Hilary Spurling bigging-up the work of Caroline Moorhead in one of those formulaic best books of the last year fillers that get stuck into the review sections of newspapers every December (don't trust these micro reviews, they are just authors helping out their friends - at your expense).
Above: the best part of the Iris Origo biography is the last page. In these two paragraphs Caroline Moorehead has dropped all her sense of reverential tact and is describing things she can see. The book would have been much better if she had not been in so much awe of its subject.
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