'Stephen Barber's biography of Edmund White is both a work of literary merit and the ideal companion to its subject's life and achievements . . . profoundly insightful . . . illuminating . . . This is a book to be recommended, not only to Edmund White's many readers, but to those who care for the valency of a new critical language finding rapport with a constantly exciting subject' The Times

'He calls it a biography; I believe it to be something rarer than this. It is simultaneously a presentation of Edmund White's actual life and oeuvre, with specific details and ananalyses, and of a more general creative spirit being acted on by a time, a society, a culture and in turn giving back to it, even affecting it . . . Stephen Barber is a cultural historian of real distinction . . . and he gives us here superb, rich, unjudgemental portraits of multi-stranded societies at given times . . . A brilliant and often profound book . . . he rises to heights of which his subject (and friend) must surely himself be proud' Independent on Sunday