Dennison captures both Vita's irresistible charm and her selfishness. Like his subject, he is a natural storyteller, and his impeccable scholarship never weighs down his lively narrative.” —Independent
“Brave man to take on the biography of Vita, and he has brought it off superbly … It studies and reveals this extraordinary woman as well as could possibly be. A fine achievement.” —Spectator, Susan Hill
“Astute and engaging, Dennison looks again at Vita's extraordinary life and makes a new sort of sense of it … fascinating … an insightful book. The connections between Vita's childhood, her dispossessions, her sexuality and her writing are compellingly explored. Vita emerges as a complex and interesting character, and far more than a gay icon.” —Literary Review
“Dennison emphasises the desire for solitude that existed in tension with her joyous sensuality and need for love.” —Guardian
“Detailed and fascinating … Dennison shows true admiration for his latest subject … freshly chronicled here for the first time in more than 30 years.” —Daily Express
“Intimate … A splendid biography of a splendid character.” —The Lady
“Comprehensively documents her literary … with evocative portraits of her husband [and lovers] … Dennison's Vita is convincingly ambivalent and inflammatory, a product of her age.” —New Statesman
“This carefully researched book is intelligently and elegantly written … balanced, oratical and confident.” —Spectator
“A judicious but lively biography of the highly un-Victorian Queen Victoria . . . an insightful, short look at the life of an immortal if only sometimes-admirable queen.” —Kirkus Reviews on Queen Victoria
“Only a very talented biographer could get to the key of Queen Victoria's complicated and psychologically fascinating personality. . . . In Matthew Dennison she has found one.” —Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War on Queen Victoria
“Fascinating.” —Vogue on The Last Princess
“An erudite, nuanced, and engrossing portrait of a turbulent era and an empress demonized for refusing to be invisible.” —Publishers Weekly on Livia, Empress of Rome
“Dennison has pulled off a tremendous coup in writing a short and concise book . . . [with] the confidence of considerable research, well digested and well delivered. . . . The Cast of characters is a rich one, and Dennison knows them well. . . . Perfect.” —The Times (UK) on Queen Victoria
“Only a very talented biographer could get to the key of Queen Victoria's complicated and psychologically fascinating personality and character. Fortunately, in Matthew Dennison she has found one.” —Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War on Queen Victoria
“Unputdownable . . . these histories from 2,000 years ago are riveting in their insight, black humor, and sheer readability. ” —Daily Mail on Twelve Caesars
“Dennison has constructed a nattarive that his classical forbears would instantly recognize and appreciate.” —Library Journal on Twelve Caesars
05/01/2015
Dennison (The Last Princess) seeks to tell both the outward story of his subject—heiress, scandal-mongering rebel, and shirker of establishment norms—and the inner life of a poet and novelist. That these disparate stories occur in the same person, Vita Sackville-West (1882–1962), makes for an entertaining read. However, one may need a little patience. Even with the salacious and aristocratic content, the text simply doesn't command attention until almost halfway through. Perhaps Dennison delves into his subject too quickly; he assumes a familiarity with Sackville-West on the part of his reader but fails to spell out why we should care. The result is an attitude of pretentious assumption, apparently imparting the flavor of the writer. It's clear by the end of the account that Sackville-West was a singular individual, and as she becomes more sympathetic to the reader, the narrative warms. Whether she had composed all her novels and poetry seems beside the point; readers will find her dedication to gardening and dogs just as endearing. VERDICT Libraries that serve patrons with both literary interests and Anglophile tendencies (including fans of Downton Abbey) will find that this repast satisfies both appetites.—Linda White, Maplewood, MN
★ 2015-02-17
A passionately delineated portrait of the savage writer, fiercely private lover of women, and eccentric denizen of Sissinghurst. There are many moments in this breathless biography of Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) when British journalist and biographer Dennison (The Twelve Caesars: The Dramatic Lives of the Emperors of Rome, 2013, etc.) is so caught up in his narrative that he neglects to fill in the blanks for readers unfamiliar with his enigmatic subject, the British novelist and poet known mostly for her ardor for Virginia Woolf and as a gardener at Sissinghurst later in life. Nonetheless, on the whole, the author ably illuminates the life of his fiery subject. She was a creature of the ancient aristocratic order who pined forever for the loss of the Sackville ancestral home, Knole House, in Kent, which her profligate mother, Victoria, nearly lost in 1912 due to its massive financial drain but which essentially passed by inheritance laws to the nearest male heir. Growing up in Knole shaped Vita's extravagant, secretive persona, and Dennison constantly returns to her duality of nature, male and female, that she would try to resolve in her writing. An only child to her overbearing mother, she adored playing dramatic roles, cross-dressing, and wearing masks. The two great loves of her life allowed her to indulge her passion for concealment: her homosexual diplomat husband, Harold Nicholson, and the relentless lover of her mid-20s, Violet Keppel, who christened Vita "Mitya" or "Julian" as they danced scandalously across Europe. Dennison downplays Vita's relationship with Woolf as a smoldering and significant writerly friendship. His narrative is utterly absorbing in its attention to the minutiae of property, inheritance, houses, clothing, and letters. All the while, the author extracts from Vita's writing rich autobiographical detail. A lively, vigorously written biography of a singular character that beckons readers urgently back to Sackville-West's writing.
