Brief Lives: Twentieth Century Pen Portraits from the Dictionary of National Biography - Hardcover

Drawn from the archives of The Dictionary of National Biography, this collection offers 150 sharply drawn profiles of the men and women who have helped shape British national life this century.

Full of insight and wit, and often surprisingly frank, these vignettes provide definitive portraits of their subjects by people who new them personally. Writers, artists, and musicians rub shoulders with scientists, industrialists, politicians, and soldiers in this unique and highly readable
celebration of national endeavour and achievement. From Laura Ashley to Evelyn Waugh, Tony Hancock to Bertrand Russell, Brief Lives offers some of the riches of the DNB in a single, affordable volume.

One of the delights of this entertaining anthology is that many of the mini-biographies are written by people who themselves are prominent in public life and who write from personal knowledge of their subjects. Discover:

* Kingsley Amis on Sir John Betjeman
* Michael Kitson on Sir Anthony Blunt
* Stephen Spender on W. H. Auden
* Ian Gilmour on R. A . Butler
* Richard Ellmann on T. S. Eliot
* Roy Jenkins on Anthony Crosland
* Yehudi Menuhin on Jacqueline du Pre
* Alan Bennett on Russell Harty
* Donald Trelford on Sir Len Hutton
* David Cecil on Virginia Woolf
* Philip Ziegler on Wallis Simpson