Thomson, Taylor, Heilbrunn, Pembroke

I've read Caroline Heilbrunn's The Garnetts, about a literary family: one was head of the British Library, the next was a great editor in London, the third was a translator of Russian literature, and the fourth was a novelist. Sort of like the Polanyi intellectual family: a philosopher, an economist, a chemist. I have also read a great book by the AUTHOR Elizabeth Taylor, called Angel. It's about an eccentric young writer, and the protagonist she created is charming. I also read David Thomson's memoir of the love of his youth in Woodbrook -- I knew when he got to kiss his girl after a decade of puppy love it wasn't going to end well. She does die at the end, before they have a chance to be together. Finally I wrote a fairly thin biography of the Countess of Pembroke, who was a patron of literature and a writer herself. Hard to reconstruct what happens at such a distance. It's called Philip's Phoenix.