The Quality Of Love by Ariane Bankes

 

The Quality Of Love by Ariane Bankes.

Published 2nd May 2024 by Duckworth.

From the cover of the book:

A rich family archive reveals the incredible lives and loves of two sisters who captivated Europe’s intelligentsia.

When her mother Celia Paget died, Ariane Bankes inherited a battered trunk stuffed with letters and diaries belonging to Celia and her twin Mamaine. This correspondence charted the remarkable lives of the Paget sisters and their friends and lovers, including Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir, and George Orwell.

Out of this rich archive, The Quality of Love weaves the story of these captivating and unusually beautiful identical twins who overcame a meagre education to take 1930s London society by storm and move among Europe’s foremost intellectuals during the twentieth century’s most dramatic decades. Above all, it is a sparkling portrait of the deep connection between two spirited sisters.

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When Ariane Bankes' mother, Celia died, she left behind a battered trunk stuffed full of memories that shone a light on the lives of two remarkable women - the Paget twins, Celia and her twin sister, Mamaine. In The Quality of Love, Bankes employs this archive to piece together the history of these women, from earliest childhood, showing how they came to be involved with the intellectual movers and shakers of the 20th century.  

Bankes uses her mother's photographs, letters and diaries to cover a lot of historical ground in a very engaging way, weaving through the decades to tell a tale of two bold and beautiful women who eschewed societal conventions to follow their own path, even if this meant they were not always happy with the choices they made - especially when it came to their passionate, and tempestuous relationships. This is almost like a tour through the annals of modern history - society balls of the Roaring Twenties; glamorous sojourns on the Continent in the 1930s; the grim determination and austerity of World War II; the Cold War years; Middle Eastern conflict... we take a stroll through them all, led by the vivacious Paget twins.

Throughout, Bankes details how the sisters carved out a place for themselves at the heart of political, philosophical, and literary circles, rubbing shoulders (and sometimes conducting torrid affairs) with leading figures of the intelligentsia, such as Orwell, Camus and Koestler. You can really feel the vibrancy of the world in which they lived, where the ideas that shaped the 20th century were fervently discussed. They were no slouches when it came to their own careers and intellectual pursuits either, even though their health was often fragile.

This book is essentially an emotional love letter from Bankes to her mother, and the aunt she never knew, and it incorporates so much history and social history in the telling. The bond that Celia and Mamaine shared, and the more intimate sides of the lives of their friends and family (many of them very famous characters), really stand out and make this book so readable - especially via the informal snaps and snippets of personal letters concerned with affairs of the heart and matters of sickness and health. 

Fascinating, and poignant, I easily consumed this in an afternoon, and it sent me down lots of rabbit holes about the people Celia and Mamaine knew, and the events they lived through. Highly recommend if you enjoy books that offer intriguing insight into historical context through the hidden lives of extraordinary women. 

The Quality of Love is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Duckworth for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Ariane Bankes had a long career in publishing, including at John Murray and V&A Publishing, before becoming a writer, critic and curator. 

Her writing has appeared in the Spectator, TLS, Financial Times, Country Life and Slightly Foxed. 

She is Honorary President of Koestler Arts, and runs the Hatchards & Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize and the Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize.