I read this book because it tied in to my recent interest in the Bright Young Things. Found it also connected to the Harlem Renaissance and the Spanish Civil War, two other threads I am pursuing through my library. Nancy Cunard had enormous intellectual energy and tried her hand at poetry, journalism, and running a small press. She was committed to Black civil rights and anti-fascism. But her record of actual achievement is slight. She is chiefly remembered by association with an impressive list of contemporary writers and artists. Chisholm documents her life with reference to a wide range of original sources. She gives Cunard credit where credit is due without attempting to minimise or explain, let alone justify, Cunard’s many self-destructive choices. I am surprised that further biographies of Cunard have apparently been thought necessary. Well-written as this book was the story is ultimately very depressing as Cunard descends into isolation and alcoholic paranoia.

I had a grand-father-in-law once who was a contemporary of Nancy. He knew some of the personalities mentioned in this biography (Richard Aldington, Roy Campbell). As a contemporary, he embraced fascism and antisemitism, while Nancy was fervently communist. Both set up private presses in France; and both displayed the same personality irregularities that would all of a sudden produce violent argument and invective sprayed all over the place. Both displayed persecution traits that they traced to shadowy forces (CIA and Home Office).
And sadly, they both ended their days alone, distressed, invariably pissed. Those who remained of their friends, had got old alongside them, and they could not manage, or tolerate any longer, their mental decline and shambled existence.
A very interesting biography about a woman who lived full-throttle when the going was good.

This biography was so good because Nancy Cunard was such an amazing (and complex) individual and 20th century woman that I am shocked and stunned I had not heard of her. Thank God Anne Chisholm chose to write a biography of her; otherwise, Nancy Cunard would have been lost to oblivion, I fear, and that would be tragic. Where are the movies/PBS series with dozens of episodes that could be produced about her and the times she lived in? I am now reading Nancy Cunard: Brave Poet, Indomitable Rebel (1896-1965) edited by Hugh Ford. I will also read These Were the Hours by Nancy Cunard, about her small press publishing venture where she, as one example, published Ezra Pounds first 30 Cantos. Thankfully I could find and obtain these difficult to find books. I also am very grateful to Judith Mackrell for choosing her as one of the six women she wrote about in Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation. I'd like to add, however, that Nancy does not fit the label/category of what, perhaps, is understood as a flapper. So if you happen to be a woman reading this review, all I can say is this biography is a must read. I understand a more recent biography is out on Nancy Cunard, but I chose to go with the earlier biography first. ( )