The Dazzling Paget Sisters

After the prominent London literary socialite Celia Goodman née Paget died in 2002, her daughter, Ariane Bankes, inherited a battered trunk stuffed with letters and diaries that belonged to Celia and her identical twin sister, Mamaine. This correspondence charted two remarkable lives spent amongst a remarkable cast of characters who were at the heart of their age, including Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and George Orwell.

Throughout a secluded childhood in the country with their widowed father, boarding school, and Swiss finishing school, they remained inseparable. As debutantes, they took 1930s London by storm, rejecting conventional suitors in favor of life together amongst the city’s bohemian intelligentsia. During the war and after, they were at the side of Europe’s foremost intellectuals—as coworkers, close friends, and lovers.

This captivating memoir is an intimate portrait of a lost age and the male thinkers who dominated it, as seen through women’s eyes. Above all, it’s the tale of two devoted sisters, remarkable women both.