I delivered the biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard last week ago – always a nice feeling, but I shall miss her.She was funny and courageous and loyal, dramatically impulsive and romantic, and at the same time very down to earth and practical. A better chooser of friends than she was of men, and a better writer than she’s often given credit for. I think that’s changing, thanks largely to Hilary Mantel being such a fan and such a powerful voice: here is the link to a brilliant piece she wrote about Jane on 16 January in The Guardian. I love this cover – it’s a photograph of her from the early 1960s, when was in her late thirties.You can see the innocence there, behind the femme fatalelooks.
Bringing History to Life