"Nowadays, one meets fewer 'Characters' than of old, and life seems to be far more uniform. Everyone knew some oddities in their childhood, curious people who looked and behaved quite unlike others, but such pronounced individuality is rare to-day." In the mesmerising autobiography, Without Knowing Mr Walkley, acclaimed novelist Edith Olivier describes her remarkable life, which spanned the last decades of the nineteenth century, two world wars, and the birth of modern Britain. The daughter of a stern, traditional and fiercely charismatic Victorian rector, her journey begins with a childhood rooted in the timeless traditions of the Wiltshire countryside. From the start, Olivier's account is a treasure trove of historical knick-knacks and engaging anecdotes: from her studies at Oxford University in 1895 to her friendships with famous First World War poets, energetic efforts on behalf of the Women's Land Army and supernatural experiences on the Salisbury plains. Edith Olivier's wry and witty narrative vividly conjures the oddball characters, smells, sounds and sights of a bygone era.

"Nowadays, one meets fewer 'Characters' than of old, and life seems to be far more uniform. Everyone knew some oddities in their childhood, curious people who looked and behaved quite unlike others, but such pronounced individuality is rare to-day." In the mesmerising autobiography, Without Knowing Mr Walkley, acclaimed novelist Edith Olivier describes her remarkable life, which spanned the last decades of the nineteenth century, two world wars, and the birth of modern Britain. The daughter of a stern, traditional and fiercely charismatic Victorian rector, her journey begins with a childhood rooted in the timeless traditions of the Wiltshire countryside. From the start, Olivier's account is a treasure trove of historical knick-knacks and engaging anecdotes: from her studies at Oxford University in 1895 to her friendships with famous First World War poets, energetic efforts on behalf of the Women's Land Army and supernatural experiences on the Salisbury plains. Edith Olivier's wry and witty narrative vividly conjures the oddball characters, smells, sounds and sights of a bygone era.

I loved A Curious Friendship. Anna Thomasson, in her first book, has brilliantly captured this strange coterie.' Sir Roy Strong The winter of 1924: Edith Olivier, alone for the first time at the age of 51, thought her life had come to an end. For Rex Whistler, a 19-year-old art student, life was just beginning. They were to start an intimate and unlikely friendship that would transform their lives. Gradually Edith's world opened up and she became a writer. Her home, the Daye House, in a wooded corner of the Wilton estate, became a sanctuary for Whistler and the other brilliant and beautiful younger men of her circle: among them Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Tennant, William Walton, John Betjeman, the Sitwells and Cecil Beaton - for whom she was 'all the muses'. The story is set against the backdrop of a period that spanned the madcap parties of the 1920s, the sophistication of the 1930s and the drama and austerity of the Second World War. With an extraordinary cast of friends and acquaintances, from the Royal Family to Tallulah Bankhead, Anna Thomasson's A Curious Friendship brings to life, for the first time, the curious, unlikely and fascinating friendship of a bluestocking and a bright young thing.

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

On August 10, 1901, two English ladies decided to visit the Palace of Versailles for what was anticipated to be an ordinary day of sightseeing. However, on that fateful day, a series of mysterious encounters occurred. When the ladies visited Queen Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon, both were later convinced they had stepped back in time to the eighteenth century. One of the ladies even believed she had witnessed the queen herself! Were the ladies encounters a case of mistaken identity and confusion, or did they unknowingly step back in time to walk along paths from a bygone era at Versailles?

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