Ellen Terry was a natural actress who filled the theatre with a magical radiance. "The Times" called her the 'uncrowned queen of England' but behind her public success lay a darker story. The child-bride of G. F. Watts, she eloped with a friend of Oscar Wilde at 21 and gave birth to 2 illegitimate children. But her greatest partnership was on-stage, with legendary actor-manager and tragedian Henry Irving. At the Lyceum Theatre in London, the two of them created a grand Cathedral of the Arts.Their intimately-involved lives exceeded in plot the Shakespearean dramas they performed on stage - and indeed were curiously affected by them. They also influenced the life and work of their remarkable children, Ellen's children in particular. Edy Craig, who founded a feminist theatre group, The Pioneer Players, established a lesbian community whose complex love-affairs make those of the Bloomsbury Group appear quite conventional. Her brother, Edward Gordon Craig, the revolutionary stage designer who collaborated with Stanislavski on a spectacular production of "Hamlet" in Moscow, is revealed by this book to be the forgotten man of modernism.
Read an extract from the book at Times Online
A BOOK OF SECRETS by Michael Holroyd
Reviews
The Economist
The Economist
""The author confesses that his choice of such a broad canvas was “foolhardy” but his rambling tale of theatre people is captivating... Sir Michael’s delightful narrative—he has given up footnotes—reads like a series of compelling scripts for an extravagant soap opera, perhaps titled “WestEnders”.""
28/08/2008
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The Financial Times
Jackie Wullschlager
"A Strange Eventful History, [Holroyd's] first biography for 15 years, has all the tumbling narrative, spicy detail and easy empathy that determine his Midas touch. But it has something else, too: a rich, playful style more typically associated with lyric forms – The Tempest, Così fan tutte – which shows Holroyd yet again pushing the biographer’s art to new imaginative planes."
22/09/2008
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The Guardian
Richard Eyre
"While there is a continent of social and cultural knowledge, the narrative is never buried beneath it, and meandering tributaries that appear to be trickling nowhere invariably return to the main flow. He also has a dramatist's ear for dialogue and for making all the minor characters interesting. Add to this a nose for a good story and a wit that often undermines his subjects' seriousness without ever capsizing it, and you have an entirely captivating biography which ranks alongside his Bernard Shaw and his Lytton Strachey as one of the glories of the form."
06/09/2008
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The Independent
Frances Spalding
"Michael Holroyd has once again triumphed over a seemingly impossible subject... In order to weave together the lives of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as their dynasties, his narrative is necessarily convoluted. But it is also deftly plotted, with an infectious verve that springs from his delight in the waywardness of human nature."
19/09/2008
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The Independent on Sunday
Mark Bostridge
"Holroyd evokes the mysterious world of the Victorian and Edwardian theatre, the hiss of the gas footlights, the coloured lights and smoke, with all the attention to detail of the star-struck fan seated in the front stalls. But he is at his best in his delineation of the central character of Ellen Terry and her remarkable professional partnership with Henry Irving..."
14/09/2008
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The New Statesman
Paul Taylor
"A Strange Eventful History is magnificent - not just as a fascinating exercise in group biography, but as a masterpiece of comic writing. I can think of no higher compliment than to say that I think Proust would have been addicted to it, had it been published in time."
11/09/2008
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The Observer
Hilary Spurling
"She had the ability to uncover people's unacted parts,' writes Holroyd [of Terry], and the same might be said of his own uncanny powers of balance, perception and penetration in a multiple biography that somehow recaptures an ephemeral imaginative reality more intense to its subjects and their public than life itself."
07/09/2008
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The Spectator
Sarah Burton
"While we know the narrative is not authorless, Holroyd manages to interpret and analyse without ever becoming a voice that is louder than his subjects’. Subtle as an assassin, he lets his characters express themselves at every available opportunity, never suggesting a line of thought that is outside or inconsistent with the evidence he presents. Above all, he never wonders — that is our job."
15/10/2008
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Standpoint
John Gross
"A Strange Eventful History is a long book, and one that justifies its length. Packed with arresting detail, it displays the same shrewd judgment and relish for idiosyncrasy that mark Holroyd's other biographies. It also features an exceptional supporting cast... Holroyd gives us the best, most deeply considered portraits of the famous pair that we have."
01/10/2008
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The Sunday Times
John Carey
"This is a fabulous cavalcade of a book, written with infectious verve and deep imaginative sympathy, and all the stuff on Irving and Ellen is a joy to read. It would be better without Edward Gordon Craig - but then, so would anyone."
31/08/2009
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Times Literary Supplement
Susannah Clapp
"Tremendous... he lights up a theatrical period in which the aesthetics of the British stage were transformed, and actors gained new status: Irving was the first theatrical knight. Stage history, you might say, except that it’s not as mere as that: life on the boards keeps infecting life off them. Social history, you might think, but A Strange Eventful History has such buoyancy that it seems simply to move from one bright anecdote to another. "
17/12/2008
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The Daily Telegraph
Michael Arditti
"The unique position of Irving's Lyceum theatre in the nation's cultural life allows Holroyd to expand this family portrait into a portrait of an age: A Strange Eventful History depicts the disintegration of 19th-century confidence into modernist confusion... Unlike some biographers, Holroyd accepts Terry's remark that "of course" she and Irving were lovers. He paints a sympathetic picture of her romantic history... He is equally adept at charting Irving's tortured psyche."
06/09/2008
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The London Review of Books
David Edgar
"It’s been possible to detect Holroyd’s presence in his narratives before... But in A Strange Eventful History, Holroyd’s take on his subjects is both more pervasive and more diffuse. In essence, he has adopted the novelistic device of free indirect style, inhabiting rather than reporting the inner life of his characters... For much of the book, this technique affords rich entertainment, allowing Holroyd’s various personae to offer dry commentary on the eccentricities, inadequacies and delusions of most of his characters. His most striking achievement is to rescue Irving’s reputation."
01/01/2009
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The Daily Mail
Peter Lewis
"Did they sleep together? That's the first question a biographer is expected to answer, now that biography has become sexography. Tricky one, it turns out... His picture of this complex web of extraordinary characters would indeed have been tediously thespian without [Ellen Terry] at its centre. But then without her he wouldn't have attempted it."
26/09/2008
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The Literary Review
Rupert Christiansen
"Holroyd is a fascinated but unprurient chronicler of this era of bedhopping, and his understanding of its intricate web of relationships is second to none. He writes with eloquence and clarity, sketching the broader context with a light but firm touch and incidentally providing a literary masterclass in the marshalling and sifting of detail. Yet none of this can prevent A Strange Eventful History from being a bit of a slog and occasionally rather irritating."
01/09/2008
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