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The book contains eleven essays, with an introduction and index. Six of the essays focus chiefly on four pivotal members of the influential “Bloomsbury Group” – the artists Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell, the art critic Clive Bell, and the writer Virginia Woolf. Significant new light is shed on them, partly through the presentation of previously unpublished pictures, photographs, and texts, partly through the fresh examination of relevant manuscripts and images. At the same time the life and work of Fry’s wife, the artist Helen Coombe, and her feminist friend the suffragette-supporting inspector of prisons Mary Louisa Gordon, who were never “Bloomsberries”, receive close attention. The five non-Bloomsbury essays too are based on primary source-materials, including previously unpublished texts and images. The first presents thirteen letters from the British writer Rose Macaulay to the Irish poet and novelist Katharine Tynan. It is followed by two essays about the prodigious teenage talents and achievements of Dorothy L. Sayers, destined for fame as a detective novelist and religious writer. The penultimate piece is about the exotic origin and eventful life of Richard Williams Reynolds, who taught J. R. R. Tolkien at school; and the last illuminates the artist Tristram Hillier and especially the personally and professionally important first visit he made to Portugal in 1947. The collection combines homogeneity and variety, and this combination contributes to a rich and balanced picture of the cultural scene in the first half of the twentieth century.
I. Introduction 1. The Memoir Club The first meeting of the Bloomsbury Memoir Club was held on 4 March 1920. The Club was established by Mary (“Molly”) MacCarthy as a successor to the short-lived Novel Club, which she had founded in March 1913. One of her intentions, and perhaps the main one, was to encourage her literary-journalist husband, Desmond MacCarthy, to produce a substantial piece of work. From this point of view, her initiative was a failure. Membership of the Memoir Club was
conscience about the affair, given that Clive, far from being a paragon of marital fidelity, was an inveterate womaniser. His first adulterous relationship is the subject of 3 , which, researched and written in collaboration with Helen Walasek, is the first publication and detailed discussion of the frank and entertaining account Clive gave the (Bloomsbury) Memoir Club in 1921 of his long-running affair with Annie Raven-Hill, the wife of the illustrator and Punch cartoonist Leonard Raven-Hill. Our publication of
with Vanessa, and, after its resumption, ran on until 1914. Frank details of it are contained in a paper he read to the (Bloomsbury Group) Memoir Club on 2 February 1921. The paper is presented and fully discussed in Essay 3 . In view of Clive’s infidelities, he was in no position to complain if Vanessa looked elsewhere for love and sexual satisfaction. But, although the two were no longer in love, they were still good and affectionate friends; she knew that he was not in love with Annie, and, as we
clustering’, p. 295. 36 Jones & Snow, Against the Odds, p. 36. 37 Jones & Snow, Against the Odds, pp. 87 & 94. 38 A. Sayeed, In the Shadow of my Taqdir (Stanhope: The Memoir Club, 2006); S. Chatterjee, All my Yesterdays (Stanhope: The Memoir Club, 2006); R. A. A. R. Lawrence, A Fire in his Hand (London: Athena Press, 2006); B. Bhowmick, You Can’t Climb a Ladder with your Hands in Your Pockets (Warboys, Cambridgeshire: Biograph, 2006); S. Chowdhary, I Made my Home in England (Basildon: published by Savritri Chowdhary and printed by Grant-Best Ltd, 1962?). 39 J
revolution’, p. 236. 35 R. Aickman, The Attempted Rescue (1966; Leyburn: Tartarus Press, 2001), p. 10. 36 W. S. Blunt, ‘The wind and the whirlwind’ (1883), reprinted in A Secret History, pp. 404–16 (p. 414). 37 See the 1895 and 1907 prefaces and 1922 publisher’s note to the edition of A Secret History listed above. 38 Blunt, Secret History, p. v. 39 E. Dicey, ‘The future of Egypt’, Nineteenth Century, 44 (December 1898), 881–96 (p. 881). 40 Henry Keown-Boyd, The Lion and the Sphinx: The Rise and Fall of the British in Egypt, 1882–1956 (Durham, Spennymoor: Memoir Club
War (Co. Durham, The Memoir Club, 2007), 18. Netley Hospital was the military hospital where Queen Victoria had assisted in laying the foundation stone and where the Army Medical School was also located. Historically, Netley has been referred to as the ‘cradle of the Army Nursing Service, as it was the original headquarters and depot 72 Traversing the veldt with ‘Tommy Atkins’ when the service was officially established in 1881. The demolition of Netley commenced in 1966 – Elizabeth Haldane, The British Nurse in Peace and War (London, John Murray, 1923), 164, Ian
. 22 Gladys Peto, Egypt of the Sojourner (London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1928), p. 7. 23 Henry Keown Boyd, Lion and Sphinx: The Rise and Fall of the British in Egypt (Durham: Memoir Club, 2002), p. 54. 24
Church is also known as Lumen Gentium .) Some scholars argue that this was explicitly intended to reduce the power and authority of women religious. Mary Jo Weaver, New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 72. 3 Karen Armstrong , Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story ( London : Flamingo , 1981 ) and its sequel The Spiral Staircase (London: William Collins, 2004). 4 Sister Giles, The End and the Beginning (Stanhope: The Memoir Club, 2007). 5 Mary Loudon , Unveiled
Anonymised interview. 49 Sister Giles , The End and the Beginning ( Stanhope : The Memoir Club , 2007 ), pp. 14 , 23. 50 FPA: Letter from Francis Pullen to community, 31 August 1968. 51 BFI: Tx 2.8.1972, A Girl Gets Temptations – But I Wanted to Give Myself to God (‘Whicker, Within a Woman’s World’ series) (1972). 52 OSC Much Birch: Darlington Chronicles, 1972, p. 57. 53 See for example Monique Luirard , The Society of the Sacred Heart in the World of Its Times 1865–2000 ( Saint Louis, MO : iUniverse , 2016 ), pp. 240 – 1 . 54