The Pebbled Shore

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1986. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine Condition/Fine. Size: Octavo 8vo (standard book size). 351 pages. Text body is clean, and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. No foxing in this copy. Dust Jacket is in as new condition, apart from normal shop shelf wear - contains no tears or chips or other damage. All edges clean, neat and free of foxing. This record of the first 60 years of Longford's life is as her renowned biographies of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington would lead one to expect fluent, spritely, even toned and packed with sharp portraits of people (a veritable literary and political Who's Who, as it turns out). Of stimulating intellectual fare there is relatively little; Longford appears to be better at observing than analyzing. She describes her childhood (she was the daughter of doctors, and Joseph Chamberlain was her great-uncle); her merry years at Oxford, where she knew Hugh Gaitskell, Spender, Auden and many other future "eminents"; the bright social world of London's late 1920s and early 1930s, affectionately satirized by her friend Evelyn Waugh; stomping the provinces in the socialist cause; her marriage to Frank Packenham, Earl of Longford, later to be First Lord of the Admiralty; her conversion to Catholicism; and bringing up her eight children, of whom four became writers. (She also offers interesting thoughts on the art of biography.) A vivid picture of an extraordinarily fulfilled, fortunate and evidently happy life. She passed away in 2002. It includes many pictures. Quantity Available: 1. Category: Biography & Autobiography; ISBN: 0297788639. ISBN/EAN: 9780297788638. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 3116. . 9780297788638