Duckworth Books snaps up 'sparkling' family memoir of the Paget twins

Duckworth Books has snapped up a "captivating" family history of the Paget Twins from daughter Ariane Bankes. 

Rowan Cope, publisher, acquired world English volume rights including audio to The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century from Kat Aitken at United Agents. The memoir will be published in hardback publication in May 2024.

When Bankes’ mother, Celia Paget, died, she discovered reams of letters and diaries belonging to Celia and her identical twin Mamaine which charted their correspondence with their friends and lovers including Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and George Orwell. The Quality of Love "weaves the story of these charismatic, unusually beautiful and smart twins, who overcame a meagre education to take 1930s London society by storm and make their lives among Europe’s foremost intellectuals during the 20th century’s most dramatic decades". The book is a "sparkling" portrait of the two sisters, added the publisher.

Bankes has worked at Collins, John Murray and V&A Publishing houses before becoming a writer and curator. She wruns the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize and the Tony Lothian Prize. Bankes commented: "Celia and Mamaine appear in so many biographies and histories of the era, and I’ve long felt that theirs was a story that deserved its own spotlight. Tracing their lives, inner and outer, through the wealth of documents they left me has been a journey by turns amusing, touching, heart-breaking but ultimately hopeful."

Cope added: "I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I read the story of Ariane Bankes’ mother and aunt, which takes in the 1930s London deb scene and the Bright Young People; post-war London, Palestine and upstate New York; nightclubbing on the Left Bank with Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir; and the anti-totalitarian Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin. A real-life The Pursuit of Love with added intellectual and political heft, The Quality of Love offers us a delicious, droll and on occasion poignant account of two extraordinary women. We are looking forward immensely to sharing it with readers."