A melancholy and exquisitely bizarre essay on fame, morality and the vanity of human wishes ― London Review of Books
Moving and original... Julia Blackburn writes like an angel -- Mary Wesley
Pure enchantment, stranger than fiction ― Cosmopolitan
'A magically idiosyncratic collage of history, biography and travel writing, permeated with madness and fantasy, absurdity and despair... Bewitching' - The Times
About the Author
Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction - Charles Waterton, Daisy Bates in the Desert, Old Man Goya and With Billie - a family memoir, The Three of Us, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award, and two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a selection of which were published in My Animals and Other Family, and four radio plays, including The Spellbound Horses.