Images and Shadows

Images and Shadows Synopsis

The lucidly written memoir of Iris Origo, the writer of the bestselling War in Val d'Orcia It has only been through my affections that I have been able to perceive, however imperfectly, some faint "intimations of immortality" Images and Shadows is the story of those affections: for a loving, shy father, who died when his daughter was very young; for a vital, headstrong mother; for friends and family, alive and dead. And for the places Origo lived:

• Ireland, America, England
• the childhood home in the hills above Florence
• and her own beloved La Foce - the desolate, deforested estate which she and her Italian husband bought, and into which they poured the energy and patience of their best years. Iris Origo (1902-1988) is best known as a biographer and war diarist. But in Images and Shadows she writes with characteristic grace, wit and humility, almost reluctantly, about herself. Reissued with newly discovered photographs, it is both a moving insight into a lost age, and an illumination of the life and loves of an endlessly curious and thoughtful woman