For fans of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, this is the real-life story of Celia and Mamaine Paget: "devoted twins, whose lives and loves traversed the intellectual currents and crises of mid-twentieth century Europe" (Rupert Christiansen).

After 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 dazzling 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, the twins 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.

“Taking us from the high bohemia of 1930s London to the European intellectual scene of the 1940s and 1950s, Ariane Bankes weaves a story as spirited and alluring as the Paget sisters at its centre.” —Antonia Fraser

Ariane Bankes had a long career in publishing, including at John Murray and V&A Publishing, before becoming a writer, critic and curator. She is President of Koestler Arts, and runs two UK-based biography prizes. She divides her time between London and Norfolk.

Kate Bolick is an author, journalist, and lecturer in English at Yale University. Her first book, the best-selling Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She co-authored March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women (Library of America, 2019), and wrote the introductions to The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Penguin Classics, 2019), Flowers and their Meanings: The Secret Language and History of Over 600 Blooms, by Karen Azoulay (Clarkson Potter, 2023), and The Prodigal Women, by Nancy Hale (Library of America, 2023).