The Bloomsbury Group fostered a fresh, creative and vital way of living that encouraged debate and communication (‘only connect’), as often as not across the dining table. Gathered at these tables were many of the great figures in art, literature and economics in the early twentieth century: E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, J. M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, among many others. Here the Bloomsbury story is told in seven broadly chronological chapters, beginning in the 1890s and finishing in the very recent past. Each chapter comprises a series of narratives, many of which are enhanced with an appropriate recipe, along with sketches, paintings, photographs, letters and handwritten notes, and featuring original quotations throughout.

Part cookbook, part social and cultural history, this book will appeal to lovers of food and lovers of literature alike.

Frances Partridge: the last survivor of the Bloomsbury group - the authorised biography. Frances Partridge was one of the great British diarists of the 20th century. She became part of the Bloomsbury group encountering Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, the Bells, Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge. She and Ralph fell in love and married in 1933. During the Second World War they were committed pacifists and they enjoyed the happiest times of their lives together, entertaining friends such as E.M. Forster, Robert Kee and Duncan Grant. Despite losing both her husband and son, Frances maintained an astonishing appetite for life, whether for her friends, travelling, botany, or music. Her diaries (which she continued to write until her death in 2004) chronicle her life from the 1930s onwards. Their publication brought her recognition and acclaim, and earned her the right to be seen not as a minor character on the Bloomsbury stage but standing at the centre of her own.