{"product_id":"9780099507086","title":"Chasing Lost Time : The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator by Jean Findlay","description":"C. K. Scott Moncrieff's celebrated translation of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was first published in 1922 and was a work which would exhaust and consume the translator, leading to his early death at the age of just forty. Joseph Conrad told him, `I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation': some literary figures even felt it was an improvement on the original.   From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life: fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini's Italy and public man of letters - a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as `offensively brave', he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society - friends with Robert Graves and Noel Coward, enemies with Siegfried Sassoon and in love with Wilfred Owen.   Written by Scott Moncrieff's great-great-niece, Jean Findlay, with exclusive access to the family archive, Chasing Lost Time is a portrait of a man hurled into war, through an era when the world was changing fast and forever, who brought us the greatest epic of time and memory that has ever been written.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311551459701,"sku":"9780099507086","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099507086.jpg?v=1762818293","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9780099507086","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}