The Dazzling Paget Sisters: The English Twins Who Captivated Literary Europe

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.