A. S. Byatt lives and writes in her handsome west London house and, in the summer months, in her house in the south of France. Both are filled with art, predominantly by her contemporaries, libraries of extravagant, Borgesian range and curiosa of many kinds...hinting at her unusual fecundity of mind: exotic preserved insects, the intricate examples of Venetian millefiori glassware and objects rare and fascinating of all imaginable varieties.
If English writing has stopped being a matter of small relationships and delicate social blunders, and has turned its attention to the larger questions of history, art, and the life of ideas, it is largely due to the generous example of Byatt's wide-ranging ambition.
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