Facades — John Pearson

First published in 1978 Faades details the lives of three of the twentieth century's most intriguing literary figures: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. Aristocrats emanating from a privileged but loveless youth, they moulded the scene of the English avant-garde throughout the 1920s and in Cyril Connolly's words, 'had they not been there a whole area of life would have been missing.' Picking up protgs and starting feuds with equal alacrity they were never far from controversy and were often slighted for being better known for the faades which they put up around their work rather than their artistic out-put in itself. Whether these faades were set up to hide their art or their deeply conflicted personal lives is one of the most compelling problems brought up by Pearson. With as much attention paid to both the private and public aspects of their lives, this biography captures the manifest intrigue of one of England's strangest and most flamboyant families, and the whole host of fascinating characters from T.S Eliot to Gertrude Stein, with whom their paths intersect.