Lance Richardson

''Fascinating'' KATHERINE MAY, author of WinteringDiscover the many lives of Peter Matthiessen – writer, naturalist, activist, CIA agent, Zen master – in this kaleidoscopic biography of an American literary giant.Author of The Snow Leopard, co-founder of the Paris Review and the only writer to have ever won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen was a towering figure of twentieth-century American literary culture. He was also, briefly, an undercover agent for the fledgling CIA; an environmental activist; an advocate for Native American rights and California farmworkers; friends with the likes of Truman Capote and William Styron; and a daring explorer who visited every continent on Earth, scaling the Himalayas and floating through the Amazon on a balsawood raft.Across these many lives, Matthiessen was always searching for what he called his ‘true nature’ – an enlightened state of being, without ego – and this spiritual quest ultimately led him, even as he inflicted great pain on three wives and multiple children, to the highest ranks of Zen.Readers and critics have struggled to reconcile Matthiessen’s extraordinarily varied achievements and literary output, which included everything from experimental novels to advocacy journalism. Now, for the first time, drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, acclaimed biographer Lance Richardson pulls together the seemingly disparate threads of Matthiessen’s story. With page-turning immediacy, Richardson illuminates how the writer’s uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism and labour exploitation – to express, eloquently and presciently, that ‘in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge’.‘Splendidly readable … [Richardson] writes with flair and erudition’ The Observer on House of Nutter‘Illuminating and vividly drawn’ Sunday Telegraph on House of Nutter

From an early age, there was something different about Tommy and David Nutter. Growing up above an Edgware cafe, the boys seemed destined to lead humble lives in post-war London yet the strength of their imagination transformed them instead into unlikely protagonists of a swinging cultural revolution. In 1969, at the age of twenty-six, Tommy opened an unusual new boutique on the `golden mile' of bespoke tailoring. While shocking a haughty establishment resistant to change, `Nutters of Savile Row' became an immediate sensation among the young, rich, and beautiful, beguiling everyone from Bianca Jagger to the Beatles - who immortalised Tommy's designs on the album cover of Abbey Road. Meanwhile, David's talent with a camera vaulted him across the Atlantic to New York City, where he found himself amongst a parallel constellation of stars (including Freddie Mercury and Elton John) who enjoyed his dry wit almost as much as his photography. House of Nutter tells the glamorous true story of two gay men who influenced some of the most iconic styles and pop images of the twentieth century. Drawing on interviews with more than seventy people - and taking advantage of unparalleled access to never-before-seen pictures, letters, sketches, and diaries - Lance Richardson presents a dual portrait of brothers improvising their way through five decades of extraordinary events, their personal struggles playing out against vivid backdrops of the Blitz, the birth of disco and the devastation of the AIDS crisis. A propulsive, deftly-plotted narrative filled with surprising details and near-operatic twists, House of Nutter takes readers on a wild ride into the minds and times of two brilliant dreamers.