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Product Description
Product Description
The love affair between the celebrated writer Elizabeth Bowen and the elegant and charming Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie blossomed quickly after their first meeting in 1941 and continued over the next three decades until Bowen's death. Published for the first time, accompanied by extracts from Ritchie's remarkably candid diaries, the love letters of Elizabeth Bowen reveal an intelligent, passionate and wonderfully funny woman. In her letters and his diaries we hear the lovers' voices. Set against an ever-changing backdrop, from the Second World War to the Swinging Sixties, and featuring a glorious cast of socialites, writers and politicians, including Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Isaiah Berlin and John F Kennedy, Love's Civil War is at once a fascinating and intimate portrait of a great love that endures distance, circumstance and time.
About the Author
Victoria Glendinning is the award-winning biographer of Elizabeth Bowen, Leonard Woolf, Anthony Trollope, Edith Sitwell, Vita Sackville-West, Rebecca West and Jonathan Swift. Her novels, The Grown-Ups, Electricity and Flight, were critical and commercial successes. She divides her time between London, Provence and Ireland.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Elizabeth Bowen is one my favourite authors, so it was with great interest that I began this book about the great love of her life - her affair with Charles Ritchie. Although there are already two reviews of this book, the first very detailed and interesting, I felt that I would like to answer the criticism of the book as being upper class. I do understand what the reviewer meant by this criticism - looking at Charles Ritchie's diary entries and Elizabeth Bowen's letters, there is an element of self indulgence and class consciousness about them, that is much less relevant today. Elizabeth Bowen was a great author - and much less read now than she was, so it is hard to gauge how important and popular she was - however, she was a product of her class. She tends to make very sweeping statments, such as describing the Spanish as looking "fearfully common". It must be remembered, though, that she made these comments in private letters which, presumably, she never expected to see published. Elizabeth Bowen was Anglo-Irish, living in a 'Big House', with a home in London and domestic staff. The editor notes that some of Elizabeth's attitudes and prejudices will give offence and others are typical of her class and period, but really this is the story of a love affair and all that entails. In some sense, the story is a sordid one - the betrayal of a wife and husband. Hints of Charles leaving one of Elizabeth's letters where his wife would see it - for what purpose? Secret meetings and desperate wishes (mostly from Elizabeth) for more contact. When Elizabeth's husband dies, her calm facade sometimes cracks and the despair and lonliness is shown bare, in a way which makes you feel both disapproving of her behaviour and also saddened for her. In a sense, the difference of class and time show that, in the end, human behaviour is more similar than different. Elizabeth Bowen always claimed she was a writer before she was a woman and, thankfully, it is her writing that she will be judged on. However, if you have an interest in her work, it is really illuminating to read her private words and to understand how she loved, how deeply, and how it inspired her writing.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
I bought this book after reading a review in the Guardian - at the minute I find reading books set in 30's - 50's quite interesting in terms of style (much better than the churned out stuff that seems to be 2 for 3 in bookshops - I use this term loosely because real bookshops are rare these days) ie - Barbara Pym. However, I found this book readable, but, it tells the story of lives so distinctly different from my experience it was almost laughable - the story of 2 very privileged people living extravagent self indulgent lifestyles and wallowing in self pity and self righteousness - unless you originate from the social background of the people on whom this book is set - don't waste your money
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