Promotional Information

A vivid and moving account of the remarkable friendship between the writer Edith Olivier and the young artist Rex Whistler.

Table of Contents

Section - i: List of Illustrations Section - ii: Introduction Unit - 1: BEFORE Chapter - 1: Edith Chapter - 2: Rex Chapter - 3: Rex Unit - 2: THE LOVE CHILD Chapter - 1: San Remo Chapter - 2: The Daye House Chapter - 3: 'At The Shrine of Beauty' Chapter - 4: The Darling Chapter - 5: A 'Dream Change' Unit - 3: TABLEAUX VIVANTS Chapter - 6: Bright Young People Chapter - 7: Town and Country Chapter - 8: Revels Chapter - 9: 'Adored Sons' Chapter - 10: Bird Songs Chapter - 11: Krol Dudziarz Chapter - 12: 'The Trail of the Serpent' Chapter - 13: 'Bells at Midnight' Unit - 4: REVERSIBLE FACES Chapter - 14: Moonraking Chapter - 15: Ashcombe Chapter - 16: 'Peintre de Luxe' Chapter - 17: The 'Storm Touched Soul' Chapter - 18: 'The Happy Heartbreak' Chapter - 19: Sex Unit - 5: LANDSCAPES Chapter - 20: Distance Chapter - 21: An 'Eventful Year' Chapter - 22: La Belle Dame Chapter - 23: 'Out of Ordinary' Chapter - 24: 'Another Season' Unit - 6: PAINTING FROM LIFE Chapter - 25: Commission Chapter - 26: 'The Conditional' Chapter - 27: Home Chapter - 28: 'In The Long Ago' Chapter - 29: Action Unit - 7: AFTER Chapter - 30: 'The Loving Spirit' Chapter - 31: Legacies Acknowledgements - iii: Acknowledgements Section - iv: Notes Section - v: Select Bibliography Index - vi: Index

About the Author

Anna Thomasson studied for an M Phil in Biography at the University of Buckingham and her thesis was shortlisted for the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize. She lives in London and this is her first book.

Reviews

A Curious Friendship tells the story of Rex Whistler and Edith Olivier with haunting novelistic intensity - a remarkable first book.
*Observer Best Books of 2015*

I loved A Curious Friendship. Anna Thomasson, in her first book, has brilliantly captured this strange coterie.
*Sir Roy Strong*

Provides a window on to a fascinating world, and the story is narrated with elegant verve
*Guardian*

Thoroughly researched, with elegant prose and a glittering cast of characters, Thomasson's account merges Victorian sensibilities with the raucous Jazz Age, giving the reader the best of both worlds.
*The Lady*

Reverent and sympathetic, and often fascinating
*Independent*

Anna Thomasson tells her story well, her suggestions are shrewd, her prose pleasant, both are backed by much research.
*Oldie*

Anna Thomasson is a wonderful writer, with a pitch-perfect ear and a marvellous sense of style. She knows her characters intimately with the result that one completely trusts her judgment every inch of the way.
*Selina Hastings*

Moving, thoughtful, entertaining and magnificently researched, Thomasson's account of a bohemian art student and sharp-witted - sometimes comically snobbish - spinster is an outstandingly accomplished and original first biography from a writer for whom we can predict a very bright future.
*Miranda Seymour*

Anna Thomasson has uncovered a remarkable story and brings these two fascinating but forgotten figures and their brilliant world vividly to light. An impressive debut.
*Julie Kavanagh*

It is a vibrant, admirably researched debut, tinkling with famous artistic names. A non-fictional Brideshead Revisited, it's piquantly evocative of that lost aesthetic echelon of 1920s & 1930s society which dissolved amid the shadows of war; and the convention-defying friendship threaded through it is enthralling
*Caroline Sanderson*