Диана Атилл – лучшие книги

Diana Athill was born in England on December 21, 1917. She was educated at Oxford University. During World War II, she as a researcher with the BBC. She worked as an editor at Allan Wingate and then at André Deutsch. Athill started writing autobiography in her early 40s. Her memoir, Instead of a Letter, was published in 1962. Her other memoirs included After a Funeral; Make Believe; Alive, Alive Oh!; Stet; Yesterday Morning; and A Florence Diary. Somewhere Towards the End won a Costa Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other works included a volume of short stories entitled An Unavoidable Delay and a novel entitled Don't Look at Me Like That. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2009. She died on January 23, 2019 at the age of 101.

As a young woman, Diana Athill was engaged to an air force pilot—Instead of a Letter tells how he broke off the engagement, married someone else, and, worst of all, died overseas before she could confront or forgive him. Evoking perfectly the picturesque country setting of her youth, this fearless and profoundly honest story of love and modern womanhood marks the beginning of Athill’s brilliant literary career.

When Diana Athill met the man she calls Didi, she fell in love instantly and out of love just as fast. Didi’s quirks, which at first appeared so charming and sweet, soon revealed a darker side—he was a gambler, a drinker, and a womanizer, impossible to live with but impossible to ignore. After a Funeral explores the years of their friendship; a period that culminated in Didi’s suicide (in Athill’s apartment). This bravura work “gives a new dimension to honesty, a new comprehension to love”