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Basil Street Blues (Paperback)

by Michael Holroyd (Author) "Towards the end of the nineteen-seventies I asked my parents to let me have some account of their early lives ..." (more)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus; New edition edition (17 Aug 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0349111340
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349111346
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 137,998 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Michael Holroyd is celebrated as one of the foremost biographers of our age. His massive and bestselling accounts of the lives of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw have been acclaimed around the world as the definitive versions for decades to come. Now he has taken time out to examine his own life, which he does with modesty, penetration and a good deal of anecdote and humour. The result is a delightful portrait of himself, his family and the years he grew up in. He was conceived in Basil Street Hotel, Knightsbridge, to a Swedish mother by an Anglo-Irish father. He went to Eton but not to university, though he has since been awarded no less than five honorary degrees. Holroyd has a talent for bringing minor characters vividly to life in the most extraordinary deadpan asides. For instance, his grandfather, whose favourite author was "an American homosexual nutritionist called Gayelord Hauser who, at an advanced age and on a diet of cider vinegar and black molasses, hazelnuts and soy bean oil, was said to have enjoyed an affair with Greta Garbo." It is a tremendous shame that neither author nor publisher thought it necessary to add an index. But that aside, this is an entertaining volume of memoirs. --Christopher Hart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'A subtle, courageous book' - S. Tel. '[Holroyd] has written an original, unforgettable book' - D. Tel. 'Tense, fraught, uneasy, but mining that unease to poignant effect...an extraordinary piece of work' TLS 'I have no hesitation in awarding Basil Street Blues the full 5 stars. In the genre of autobiography, it is right up there in my personal pantheon...[a] haunting & beautifully understated tragi- comedy' M. on Sunday
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Towards the end of the nineteen-seventies I asked my parents to let me have some account of their early lives. Read the first page
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4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Why do we care?, 20 Feb 2004
By Ripple (uk) - See all my reviews
  
This is a strange idea. This is a biography of the author's family, but not an autobiography. Holroyd himself is a remarkable biographer and he brings many of these qualities to this venture, but somehow you are left with the feeling that the reason you've read his other tomes is that you are interested in the subjects, but here that is not the case. In places you do find yourself drawn in, particularly when he talks of his grandparents' generation, but the pieces on his parents are less enthralling. The one reason for buying this is a "laugh out loud" moment where it becomes clear that the author has been writting both sides of an afair by letter for his mother and one of his step fathers. It is probably worth reading for that description alone, but otherwise good writting does not make up for the fact that we don't really care about the subjects.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Who is and who isn't allowed to do the washing up, 18 Sep 2009
By E. Shaw "Kokoschka's_cat" (Leeds, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
A fascinating insight into the upper middle-class background of the Holroyd family (Holroyd is married to Margaret Drabble) which made its early money in tea from India, and held onto that for the best part of a century. Basil, the youngest son, was Michael's father and by far the most interesting of the family with his rocky business sense and indefatigable imagination. He married twice, the first time to a Swedish beauty, Ulla, who brought with her to England her formidable mother Kaja. His second marriage was to a mysterious working class voluptuary Agnes Babb. Michael's efforts to trace this lady, who left his father and disappeared after marrying a richer man, extend to a reward notice in the back of the book.

A mounting unease and later despair is the situation of the older members of this family, as Michael succeeds in becoming one of the foremost biographers of the genre. Grandmother Adeline, daughter Yolande, their old nanny (called Old Nan) and intermittently Basil and his eldest brother Kenneth, inhabit the family home along with a number of ageing dogs These people are prone to arguing and fighting with miserable results, presumably the dogs are similarly neurotic. For an outsider this strikes one as marvellously funny, since most of the arguments seem to centre around who is and who isn't allowed to do the washing up, but I expect it wasn't that much fun for any of them.

The story of their childhood traumas, their schooldays, their marriages, their business disasters and their deaths makes sometimes gruelling reading and at times Holroyd seems a little too obsessed with detail, leaving the reader's attention to wander, especially towards the end of the book. On the whole, however, this is a good read.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Basil StreetcBlues, 6 Feb 2006
It beats me how this book was so widely praised, except of course that Holroyd is a member of the log-rolling literary mafia. It is a tedious, self-regarding, self-important account of family and personal trivia, delivered without wit or style. I advise Amazon customers to avoid it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars I Cared
I cared about the people; I thought the book was fascinating. Although he does very cleverly managed not to reveal much about himself, his descriptions of his family and what... Read more
Published on 20 July 2005

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