First published 2015
Michael Holroyd, Britain's most celebrated biographer, applies his investigative skills to his own family history in this deeply personal memoir. The title references the Basil Street Hotel where Holroyd was conceived in the 1930s. Born into a household of remarkable eccentrics, Holroyd spent his childhood with his grandparents in Maidenhead after his Swedish mother and English father found they could not tolerate living together. His grandparents offered no better example of marital harmony, as his grandfather conducted a four-year affair with a woman he encountered at a bus stop before eventually returning home. Near the end of his parents' lives, Holroyd convinced them to record their own stories. He combines these accounts with his personal recollections and extensive research to create an intimate portrait of family dysfunction and resilience. The result reveals how the biographer's craft transforms when applied to one's own life, offering both distance and painful proximity to the subjects who shaped him.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Basil Street, Maidenhead
Period: 1930s
398 pages · Kindle Edition · Head of Zeus