Review: Augusta Leigh: Byron’s Half-Sister by Michael and Melissa Bakewell
Related Categories: Journalism, Tom Holland Posts
Celebrities, we have it on good authority, are like candles in the wind. As it is the nature of candles to illumine what would otherwise be dark, this means that within every biography of a Marilyn or Diana there are also fleeting biographies of the purely tangential, those who are of interest only because they once knew the famous. The longer the afterlife of a celebrity persists, the more famous these members of the support cast will become, until, in the end, they are awarded the highest honour that this second-hand form of fame can bestow – biographies of their own.
