Gerald Brenan: The Interior Castle: A Biography

This thoroughly researched and richly detailed biography of writer and historian Gerald Brenan (1894-1987) traces the life of a little-known member of London's Bloomsbury Group. Gathorne-Hardy ( The City Beneath the Skin ) illuminates the childhood demons that drove Brenan from his upper-middle-class English surroundings to embark, at age 18 and nearly penniless, on a walking tour of Europe that would lead to a lifetime of travel and adventure. An incurable romantic, Brenan threw himself into countless love affairs (including a nearly incestuous infatuation with his daughter Miranda), although he and his wife, Gamel, whom he married in 1931, cared deeply for each other. Brenan and Gamel eventually settled in Spain, the country that inspired his finest literary and historical studies ( The Spanish Labyrinth and The Literature of the Spanish People ), and the place where both would end their days. Photos. (Apr.)