My Grandmothers and I - Diana Holman-Hunt

BORN [25 October 1913] in the bed in which the Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt had died three years before, the writer Diana Holman-Hunt was to inherit her grandfather's exceptional memory and gifts as a raconteur. These were cultivated by an extraordinary upbringing, which Holman- Hunt brilliantly described in her first book, 'My Grandmothers and I' (1960).An unwanted only child - whose father, Hilary, was employed in the Public Works Department in Burma - Holman-Hunt was shunted between her wealthy Freeman grandparents in Sussex, and a life of privation with the eccentric Edith Holman-Hunt ('Grand') in Kensington. Brave and resourceful, she soon learnt that adult affection was conditional, in the country, on her ability to entertain - she was constantly exhorted to 'utter' - and, in Melbury Road, Kensington, to take in and cherish anecdotes relating to the Victorian art world and her grandfather in particular. Holman-Hunt fulfilled both roles, but ultimately tired of Grand's canonisation of the great painter.... Diana Holman-Hunt's late flowering gifts as a writer owed nothing to formal education. From the ages of eight to 14 she was sent to an inferior boarding school in Eastbourne, and continued her studies in Florence, Germany, and at art school in Paris. Grand was killed by an omnibus in 1931, unexpectedly leaving nothing in her will to Diana.... Her [first] book['My Grandmothers and I'] became a best-seller the year after [her second husband's] death from cancer in 1959.... She was working on her autobiography when she died [on 10th August 1993].

Title: My Grandmothers and I

Author: Diana Holman-Hunt

ISBN: 9781906562021

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