Caryl Brahms - Last Years

Last Years

In 1975, Brahms published a study of Gilbert and Sullivan and their works. The book was lavishly illustrated, but her text, marred by numerous factual errors, merely confused the subject. In The Guardian, Stephen Dixon wrote that Brahms "manages to coast over the fact that we've heard it all before by going off at entertaining tangents in a series of anecdotes, personal interpolations, witty irrelevancies and theories." The following year, she published Reflections in a Lake: A Study of Chekhov's Greatest Plays. Among her last works of fiction were new short stories about Stroganoff, included in her collection Stroganoff in Company (1980), which also included some stories developed from ideas jotted down by Anton Chekhov in his notebooks. The reviewer of the TLS welcomed the reappearance of Stroganoff and judged the Chekhov stories "impressive in their evocation of another era and in their tribute to a more serious and formal art."

Brahms never married. Frederick Raphael notes that "her one true love", Jack Bergel, was killed in the Second World War. She died at her flat in Regent's Park, London aged 81.