Beryl Bainbridge: Artist, Writer, Friend
by Psiche Hughes
I am inordinately excited to have been able to get my mitts on this rather different biography of my favourite author, the first full biography since Beryl’s death. Thanks to my lovely neighbours who rescued it from the Amazon delivery man and depot hell this morning, so I could share it with you.
The lovely thing is that Beryl turns out to have been a brilliant artist as you can see from the cover below, and made money from her painting when writing couldn’t provide it.
This biography comes from art publishers Thames & Hudson, and is beautifully produced on quality paper with over 100 illustrations in colour and b/w including many photos of Beryl throughout her career.
Beryl and Italian-born Psiche met in the early 1960s, they were neighbours in London and their friendship lasted until Beryl’s death in 2010.
I am really looking forward to reading this book and savouring Beryl’s art. Expect a full review soon!
If you want to find out more about Beryl, why not check out my Reading Beryl page, which contains all the reviews and links from Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, which I hosted back in June.
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I received a review copy via Amazon Vine. To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
Beryl Bainbridge: Artist, Writer, Friend by Psiche Hughes, pub Oct 2012 by Thames & Hudson, Hardback, 205 pages.
Whoever chose that cover was a genius. I am going to have to have that around the house for that alone. Finding out more about Bainbridge will just be an added bonus.
Apparently she was mildly fixated on Napoleon – tis he in the.cover pic. On the first flick through,her pictures are quite earthy and all in the style of the cover – lovely colours.
A friend of ours regularly mentioned a step-mother called Beryl and we never thought anything of it, then one day she casually mentioned that this ‘Beryl’ wrote books that had been reasonably successful. It took some time before the penny dropped and my wife said “Hang on, do mean mean Beryl Bainbridge?”
At the time it seemed bizarre that she’d never bothered to mention her step-mother’s ooccupation, but to our friend the novel writing was just a part of Beryl’s life.
Steerforth, that seems entirely consistent with the picture of Beryl who is emerging from reading this biography – and the pictures are wonderful, idiosyncratic and always rooted in her life as her books were. I’m loving it, and her even more.
This sounds really lovely!
And thanks for reminding me about Amazon Vine – I’ve got back into my account (which is actually linked to a dead email address) and this is now on its way to me!
Just finished it Simon and it is a lovely book in all senses.