RaveLondon Review of Books (UK)On nearly every page of Hermione Lee’s biography—the life as it has been, not as re-imagined—there is something arresting ... These things alone would be enough to make Lee’s account reverberate. In fact, her reach is longer and more surprising. Some writers would have gone in for frisky ventriloquy: firework phrases, overarching philosophical questions, a jostle of jokes, rug-pulling, slippage between time schemes. Lee has none of that. She is assured enough to seem ‘trad’ (a word Stoppard has used about himself), arranging her giant mass of facts chronologically over 977 pages, with no muddy sentences. Yet though the prose is free of theatrical frissons, the structure works like a play. The evidence is in the action. Arguments are thrown up by juxtaposition and contrast. Room is left for doubt—again in Stoppardian fashion ... Lee writes intensely about the way Stoppard’s late recovery of his family history disturbed his view of himself and what surrounded him. The significance of her book is more than theatrical: it is a chronicle of secrets, of refugees—and of England when it was a refuge ... Lee is not inclined to wrestle with the objections of critics: the choppiest notice she quotes comes from Stoppard himself, which doesn’t really count (he calls his Rough Crossing ‘almost tosh’). One of the achievements of her book—that of wiring the reader into Stoppard’s intentions—entails a limitation. It is almost impossible not to read the aim into the finished work: it has the same effect as reading a script just before seeing a play.
