The Life of E. F. Benson

The creator of Mapp and Lucia, E.F. Benson (always known as Fred) ranks with P.G. Wodehouse as one of Britain's greatest humorists. He was born into one of the most extraordinary brilliant and emotionally doomed of Victorian families and it fell to the urbane, kindly and enigmatic Fred to steer parents and siblings through their crises. He took refuge in smart London drawing rooms; in his friendships with Oscar Wilde, Margot Asquith, Marie Corelli and Henry James; in lotus-eating days on Capri; and, always, in his writing. As this vivid and fascinating biography makes clear, the follies and well-cloaked oddities of English society, from the days of Victoria to the Second World War, shaped the story of E.F. Benson's own life as much as they did the plot of his sparkling fiction.