The son of biologist T. H. Huxley, Aldous Huxley had a privileged background & was educated at Eton & Oxford despite an eye infection that left him nearly blind. Having learned braille his eyesight then enhanced enough for him to start writing, & by the 1920s he had become a fashionable figure, producing witty & daring novels like CROME YELLOW (1921), ANTIC HAY (1923) & POINT COUNTER POINT (1928). But it is as the author of his celebrated portrayal of a nightmare future society, BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), that Huxley is remembered today. A truly visionary book, it was a watershed in Huxley's world-view as his later work became more & more optimistic
- coinciding with his move to California & experimentation with mysticism & psychedelic drugs later in life. Nicholas Murray's brilliant new book has the greatest virtue of literary biographies: it makes you want to go out & read its subject's work all over again. A fascinating reassessment of one of the most interesting writers of the twentieth century.