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Lead book review

To 'Flufftail' from 'Pinkpaws': The Animals is only good for celebrity-spotting

The correspondence between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy is good for celebrity-spotting but too cloyingly self-absorbed to be of wider interest, says <em>D. J. Taylor</em>

21 September 2013

9:00 AM

21 September 2013

9:00 AM

The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy Katherine Bucknell

Chatto, pp.481, £25

There is a fine old tradition of distinguished literary men addressing their loved ones by animal-world pet names. Evelyn Waugh saluted Laura Herbert, the woman who became his second wife, as ‘Whiskers’. Philip Larkin’s letters to his long-term girlfriend Monica Jones are full of Beatrix Potter-style references to the scrumptious carrots that his ‘darling bun’ will have unloaded on her plate at their next meeting should wicked Mr McGregor not get there first.

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