AUGUSTUS JOHN
“An entertaining, essentially comic story.. Holroyd tells it with great skill and elegance.”
Sunday Telegraph
“One of the most entertaining lives ever written... Very funny... thought-provoking.”
Mail On Sunday
“A wonderfully engrossing, entertaining and even moving book.”
Daily Telegraph
LYTTON STRACHEY
“Holroyd’s prose... is as elegant as ever. He is one of the few biographers who has retained a pronounced sense of humour.”
The Times
“Masterly: full of new insight.”
Sunday Express
“You will be won over by Strachey’s originality, independence and humanity; by his hatred of humbug and prudery; by his life-saving gift for comedy.”
Evening Standard
BERNARD SHAW
“A masterly exercise in biographical magic.”
Spectator
“This elegant volume gives the quintessence of Shaw...[it does] justice to a great Irishman.”
Irish Independent
“A man whose art rested as much upon the exercise of intelligence could not have chosen a more intelligent biographer.”
The Times
BASIL STREET BLUES
A subtle, courageous book…
Sunday Telegraph
[Holroyd] has written an original, unforgettable book
Daily Telegraph
Tense, fraught, uneasy, but mining that unease to poignant effect, Basil Street Blues is an extraordinary piece of work
TLS
I have no hesitation in awarding Basil Street Blues the full five stars. In the genre of autobiography, it is right up there in my personal pantheon...[a] haunting and beautifully understated tragi-comedy.
Mail on Sunday
A BOOK OF SECRETS
“A subtle paean to the art of biography. It is a biographical experiment, but a deeply humane and sensitive one. It glows with the energy of lives investigated, restored, reanimated and celebrated.”
Sunday Times
“Here, he has given us the distilled essence of biography and a fitting end to what he evokes as ‘the comedy of life’.”
Observer
“As is always the case with Holroyd, the reader comes away equally inspired, equally curious, and lavishly entertained by a story-teller of the first rank.”
Scotsman
“A small gem of humanity, curiosity and observation with a wonderful, rolling undercurrent of comedy”
Sunday Telegraph
“Scintillating... Holroyd’s book is a sly, inconclusive and utterly bewitching dance through the elusive narrative echoes that make up the biographer’s art”
Metro
MOSAIC
“A lovely blend of mirth and melancholy… this memoir ranks with the finest records of the period”
Waterstones Books Quarterly
“An absolute tour de force of brilliant writing.”
Telegraph
“Holroyd is a marvellously sour wit and an observer who never misses a good detail, even in extremis.”
Sunday Times
“Mosaic is restless, interrogative, hungry for knowledge and resolution.”
Guardian