Frances Partridge: The Biography, by Anne Chisholm; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009, $59.95.

Anne Chisholm has called this book “The biography”. No other has been written, or is likely to be, because Frances Partridge wrote no big books, and she is known mainly for being a friend of a number of people, most of whom were a generation older than herself, who lived in and around Bloomsbury in the years before the Second World War. But she is the author of diaries, which she kept most of her life. She published, during the 1980s and 1990s, edited diaries covering the years 1932 to 1975. I came upon one of these volumes by chance, and soon wanted to read more. Her attitude to her friends was deeply interested and affectionate, and she could describe them and their doings both objectively and sympathetically.