When Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was widely considered to be one of the most intelligent and wide-ranging English writers of the twentieth century. Associated in the public mind with his dystopian satire, Brave New World, and experimentation with drugs that preceded the psychedelic, a term he invented, era of the 1960s, Huxley seemed to embody the condition of twentieth-century man in his restless curiosity, his search for meaning in a post-religious age, and his concern about the misuses of science and the future of the planet.But Huxley was born when Queen Victoria was on the British throne. He was the grandson of the great Victorian scientist Thomas Henry Huxley "Darwin's bulldog," and the great-nephew of the great poet and critic Matthew Arnold. Exiled in the Californian sun, he never ceased to think of himself as part of a tradition that could be traced back to the Victorian public...

This novel elegantly dissects modern romantic mores. Christopher, a successful shop fitter specializing in transforming dilapidated London buildings into swanky bistros, is romantically involved with Carmen, a one-time academic now unhappily employed as a magazine columnist. Jimmy, a millionaire and virtuoso pianist with a laissez-faire attitude to life, seems to offer the fulfillment she seeks. This novel takes the form of Christopher's "memorial" to his former love. Set in London, Nice, the Greek Isles, and Tuscany, it is a beautifully crafted and utterly convincing portrait of adultery and its repercussions. Murray tracks his characters through the worlds of classical music, journalism, fashion modeling, and architecture, and asks where contentment might be found in an increasingly complex yet superficial world.

Although the century which followed Andrew Marvell's death remembered him primarily as a politician and a pamphleteer, this gifted poet is responsible for some of the most brilliant lyric exploration of his time. World Enough and Time is an extensive biography written by Nicholas Murray, a biographer whose literary scholarship and political astuteness matches that of his subject.