"Iris Origo was one of those rare characters who, despite being born with a platinum spoon in her mouth, went on to accomplish great things. In Origo's case, she managed to add light and colour to everything she touched, leaving for posterity a body of work - biography, autobiography and literary criticism - that has become recognized as a model of its kind.".

"She was born a Cutting, a wealthy and long-established Long Island family, but her talented and beloved father (who resembled, more than a little, a character right out of Henry James) died of consumption when she was only seven. She spent the following years travelling the world with her self-centered and eccentric mother and an extensive entourage, settling finally at the Villa Medici at Fiesole.

There she was introduced to the privileged world of wealthy Anglo-Florentine expatriates, a volatile community that included the Berensons, Harold Acton, Janet Ross and Edith Wharton, and whose petty bickering, and pettier politics, had a profound influence on her values and on how she spent her life.".

"Her marriage to Antonio Origo, a wealthy landowner and sportsman, was as much a reaction against this insular world as it was a surprise to her family and friends. Together they purchased, and single-handedly revived, an extensive, arid valley in Tuscany called Val d'Orcia, rebuilding the farmsteads and the manor-house.

Although dearly sympathetic to Mussolini's land use policies, they sided with the Allies during World War II, taking considerable risks in protecting children, sheltering partisans, and repatriating Allied prisoners-of-war to their units.".

"Caroline Moorehead has made extensive use of unpublished letters, diaries and papers to write what will surely be considered the definitive biography of this remarkable woman. She has limned a figure who was brave, industrious and fiercely independent, but hardly saintly. What emerges is a portrait of one of the more intriguing, attractive and intelligent women of the last century."--BOOK JACKET.