Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale

One name links Betrand Russell and Axel Munthe, Augustus John and Henry Lamb, H.H. Asquith and Duncan Grant, Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey.

To some she was a lover, to others a confidant and adviser. To many she was a mother substitute. But wherever the phrase 'Bloomsbury group' is spoken, Lady Ottoline Morrell's name is not fair behind.

A half-sister of the Duke of Portland and wife to a Liberal MP, she ran a celebrated salon from 44 Bedford Square before the First World War, swiftly emerging as a personality in her own right. Later she offered solace, comfort and hospitality at Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire, to artists and writers, undergraduate, conscientious objectors or just mere hangers-on. Her influence, which was enormous, is only just beginning to be recognised. Aldous Huxley was one of many writers to describe her as having given him 'a complete mental re-orientation'.

Fresh and often startling light is thrown not only on her passionate relationship with Bertrand Russell and on her curious marriage to Philip Morrell, which survived against all odds, but also on the Bloomsberries, their snobbery, their malice and their deceit.

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