James Strachey - James Strachey, Holroyd, and "Lytton Strachey"

James Strachey, Holroyd, and "Lytton Strachey"

James is mentioned in the text of Holroyd’s biography of Lytton Strachey, and in the introduction to the 1971 Penguin edition and the 1994–95 revised edition. James was the literary executor for his brother Lytton, so Holroyd saw James and Alix frequently over the five years from 1962 that he was researching and writing the first edition (published in 1967-68) of his biography of Lytton. He describes James as "almost an exact replica of Freud himself, though with some traces of Lytton’s physiognomy – the slightly bulbous nose in particular. He wore a short white beard because, he told me, of the difficulty of shaving. He had had it now for some fifty years. He also wore spectacles, one lens of which was transparent, the other translucent. It was only later that I learnt he had overcome with extraordinary patience a series of eye operations that had threatened to put an end to his magnum opus".

James made many objections to Holroyd's initial drafts of the biography, and 'Holroyd made the brilliant decision to publish James's acid-sounding comments as footnotes on the pages....James's testy objections helped liven up the text'.

James was also an authority on Haydn, Mozart and Wagner, and contributed notes and commentaries to Glyndebourne programmes