Basil Street Blues: A Memoir

by Michael Holroyd

"A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."―Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book Review Renowned biographer Michael Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But an investigation into the Holroyd past―guided by old photograph albums, crumbling documents, and his parents' wildly divergent accounts of their lives―gradually yields clues to a constellation of startling events and eccentric characters: a slow decline from English nobility on one side, a dramatic Scandinavian ancestry on the other. Fires, suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, unconsummated longings, and the rumor of an Indian tea fortune permeate this wry, candid memoir, "part multiple biography, part autobiography, but principally an oblique investigation of the biographer's art" ( New York Times Book Review ). "[A] perfect example of a memoir that entrances me."―Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "[O]ne of the few [biographers] who can convey what makes ordinary as well as extraordinary mortals live in our minds."― Los Angeles Times 16 pages of photographs

Genres: Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Family, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/michae...

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The past puts a fine edge on our own days. It tells us more of the present than the present can tell us.'
Holroyd's epigraph, by William Gerhardie, 'An Historical Credo'
from The Romanovs. An Evocation of the Past as a Mirror for the Present.


Michael Holroyd, the British biographer, married to Margaret Edith Drabble, the British author, was born in 1935. Some of his best writings include Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography (1967-68), Lytton Strachey: The New Biography (1994), and in between those a four volume biography of George Bernard Shaw (1988-92)




from the New York Times


This is a book I read several years ago, right around the time that I joined Goodreads. By that time I had lost both my own parents, and reading this memoir was a moving experience. This is because it is not so much a memoir of the author's life, as of the way that life was shaped, formed, guided (or not) by his parents and grandparents (siblings too).

It is based partially on writings of his parents, at Michael's request, when they were getting up in years. Not surprisingly, he found out much about both of them, and about his grandparents, which was quite new to him – or at least seemed so. (For example, he found out that he had been born on two different dates – as so recalled by his parents.)

I enjoyed the second half of the book most. Here there's a wonderful chapter about Holroyd's aunt Yolande, who was about thirty years older than him. "Whatever was to be done with 'the boy', it was usually left with my aunt to do it." Some of incidents Holroyd relates from the war years reminded ne of Evelyn Waugh's The Sword of Honour. I also enjoyed his chapter on his years at Etn, and found Legal and Military, his memories of his first attempted careers (at his father's urging) highly amusing. The penultimate chapter, Scenes from Provincial and Metropolitan Life very sad, as they deal with his parents' aging and death.

In his final few pages (Things Past), Holroyd write

My purpose has been to pare back a little the cuticle of time and to apply the research methods I have learnt as a biographer to my own life for a while, letting the detective work show through the narrative at some places for those who have a similar curiosity in human nature and its reworkings on a family chronicle. Echoes of what I have forgotten, as well as memories of events I have been unable to forget, linked where possible by discovered facts, have been my signposts.

Recommended to those who love memoirs, or have read and enjoyed any of Holroyd's other writings.



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[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sad book. Holroyd has had enormous success which he doest mention at all, because of the failures of his parents in many ways. His father died old and supported by Holroyd, his mother dies early of cancer after an eventful life, and other family live too long and have miserable ends. After writing about so many successful and brilliant people, to turn to your own family and find a reality of underachievement, snobbery, and unjustified view of their status, must have been difficult. But he remains non judgemental, and we just are left with the residual sadness about the banl ending to our lives.

[Janine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally like reading historians' and biographers' autobiographies. Not that they are generally more intrinsically interesting than other peoples' (in fact they're usually not) but I like watching how, as writers, they turn their skills onto their own lives. I must confess that I'd never heard of Michael Holroyd, and haven't read any of his biographies. And I'll also confess that had this not been a book group selection, I probably would have given up on it after the first fifty pages.
...
For me, it was only once he himself walked into the story, rather than recounting earlier generations' stories, that it became interesting. He is a good observer, but gives little of himself away. I got to the end of the book and felt as if he had been deliberately deflecting attention away from himself.
What he did capture brilliantly, however, was the decline of a formerly upper-middle (if not upper class) family, complete with all the eccentricity and emotional aridity of that type of upper-middle British reserve.
However I have since somewhat revised my lukewarm opinion of the book as biography once I realized that it is actually part of a trilogy (somehow the idea of a three-book autobiography seems rather pretentious)....
It would seem that the other volumes are more forthcoming on an emotional level, but I don't feel particularly inclined to follow up on them, or his other published biographies.

For my full review, see
https://residentjudge.wordpress.com/2...

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's petering out. Rather disappointing, I must say, and gets a bit sad (but we were warned by his choice of title). I found it mostly plodded along with details surrounding his immediate family members, none of whom I could bring myself to be interested in -- with the possible exception of his aunt Yolande who charges around walking the dogs. Thankfully I have finished it, and can now move on to the hopefully more interesting 2nd and 3rd vols (Mosaic; and Secrets, respectively).

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, both for the story and for the way it was told. I have read and admired his biographies and so his family history had strong appeal to me. I noted those reviewers who were disappointed his family was so mundane. Well, clearly that reviewer and I look for different things when reading. His family may not have headline acts, but the way in which he examines his parents and grandparents gives us a window into 20th century British family life, history and culture. It's a sweeping narrative in some ways, composed through many portrait miniatures. The accompanying volume, Mosaic, was written in response to some additional material that came to light after the publishing of this work. So I recommend reading them together. But this one can stand on its own and is the better of the two, IMHO. Two wonderful quotes stories stand out for me. One is a Samuel Johnson boast that he could write the life of a broomstick. Holroyd is far too modest to make the same claim, but were he to write such a biography I'd happily read it. Second: the image of the writer Gerhardie during the Blitz who was wearing a saucepan on his head for protection while rummaging in the cupboards for that very saucepan.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and entertaining book about an eccentric and colorful family. There were multiple divorces, remarriages, estrangements that were interesting to me because they were different from my family. His father was a failure at various enterprises and was a sad character in many ways; his mother was glamorous and meeting new men into her middle age, though she died relatively young, of cancer. Holroyd has an interestingly detached way of describing it all, but seems happy in his current life (married to Margaret Drabble and living in separate houses, which sounds perfect).

[Mary Warnement · Rating 2 out of 5]

I pressed on until page 67 and then decided to give it another try by skipping ahead of all his great- and grandparents to his memoir. Where was that? Around page 127. But not interesting. As a biographer, perhaps he knows what to conceal? But I'm looking for excuses. I have enjoyed what Slightly Foxed has selected for its editions, until now. This goes back on the shelf. How many subway rides did I try it? Three? It couldn't compete even with tedious nature of a commute. Will I ever pick it up again? Who knows.

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Described on the cover as “a family story” this is an autobiography by a biographer. Interesting to compare it with De Waal’s book (The Hare with Amber Eyes) which was so much better, written from the heart, whereas this is objective and bitty. It lacks the flow of the other book and is in dire need of a family tree. Disappointing.

[Sarah Harkness · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, as much for Holroyd's prose and wit as for the actual lives described. It is a sad story, his portrait of his Dad is very touching, although he must have been very hard to deal with. An interesting insight into the mind of a biographer.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Lesley Tilling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this before but I am re-reading biographies because I am trying to write one. This one is written with a kind of sang-froid which suits its subjects: the writer's family. There are lovely paragraphs and beautiful sentences; it is such a pleasure to read. There is wit, there is fun, but there is also seriousness. We look at these lives as wholes, from beginning to end, trying to understand how these people interacted with the opportunities that were available to them in their lives, trying to understand what lessons we might draw.

Michael Holroyd is a brilliant biographer. Here he begins way back with Victorians and traces all the stories into the 1980s. This is the generation that stepped up in WWII, and did its best. This particular family seems to do nothing but quarrel, and the parents marry and divorce three times; they don't know whether they're happy enough at any point in time; lack of money makes circumstances difficult. Holroyd is close to his father but they sometimes argued when he left school without a plan, or the inclination to follow his father's suggestion of becoming an engineer or scientist. He gives you the flavour of the arguments verbatim.

Holroyd's father tried numerous times to make money in business and was a talented salesman. He had upper class charm, but in other ways wasn't very astute. He discouraged his son from his ambition to become a writer, but was in other ways supportive, giving him a small stipend to live on in his young adulthood. His divorced mother was very beautiful and lived a rather rackety life, with rich men to support her through her beautiful years. His aunt always lived with her parents in the family home in Maidenhead, until her advanced old age, but she too had had a love affair, which began in 1932 and petered out during the war. This was a very sad story though it began so happily.

The grandmother had always been difficult and very nasty to her husband. She provides one lesson of the book: make the best of things and make the most of life, because it seems that all her life she did exactly the opposite. The author knew that she loved him, the only child of the household, but she had nothing to say to him, and he couldn't think of anything to say to her.

The author went to boarding school from an early age, which seems to have suited him, because he made friends and wasn't unhappy, particularly, though he strove to become invisible. This is quite common for schoolboys. They may blossom later.

We follow the family through their mainly downward trajectory and their adventures in love, until they one after each other become ill. This is a terrible thing, the deaths, the many trips to hospital, strokes, forgetfulness, cancer, falls, heart problems. The lack of kindness in the NHS pops up more than once, for example, when the writer is sitting at his terminally-ill mother's bedside, and a nurse refuses to give the author an aspirin. Having to find a chemist for his pain relief, he misses his mother's death.

The doctor who sees the terminally-ill mother after a six-hour wait, puts his elbow on a stack of notes, and asks her: 'So what seems to be the problem?' I mean, is he being funny?

Michael Holroyd had to do hours and hours of bureaucratic work for his parents and aunt and then watch them all die. It is terribly, terribly sad.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holroyd is a master at writing with a scintillating wit and a way of connecting with his readers that is rare. The early part of the book is interesting and necessary but filled with a lot of family and descendants that quite frankly lost me. However as he gets further into the story of his life, the author progresses in such a sharply amusing way that I was caught off-guard. I really want to read his first best seller, It's a Dog's Life." NOW I understand the back story.

[Peter Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s always interesting to read about the background of authors and see another side of their personalities.This is an entertaining account of the author and his family, very funny in parts and well worth a read for those intrigued by others.

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holroyd asked his parents to write about their lives before each of them died. He learned many things he wouldn't have known and it led him to uncover some surprising facts about his ancestors. Working with this material, and his background as a biographer of George Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey, he creates an interesting portrait of his own life and his close relations. His parents were divorced, something so unusual in 1940's Britain, that only one other boy in his boarding school had divorced parents. Holroyd keeps readers interested in the trajectory of these lives.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half is pretty interesting; the second half kind of dribbles away. I'm averaging it to 3 stars. Holroyd is a biographer who asked each of his parents to write an account of their early lives - the two accounts differ in almost every way. This memoir traces his parents and their parents down into his own life. The parents and grandparents are fascinating; his own life, not so much. He really loses focus in the second half, and meanders too much.

[Kelsey]

I want to love this, generally trusting the impeccable taste of everything Slightly Foxed chooses to publish, but I found this very dry. An accounting of the author's genealogy, with a few tasty morsels of found-out family secrets.

The writing is nice, but I had to force myself to finish it.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb writing and a fascinating family story.

[Susan Campbell]

LOVED HIS WHEN i READ IT MANY YEARS AGO.