Lytton Strachey's initial connections with the Bloomsbury group were he was a cousin of Duncan Grant and a contemporary of Clive Bell at Cambridge. The publication in 1918 of his biographical collection, the iconoclastic Eminent Victorians/, was to bring him overnight fame.

Strachey was an easy subject for caricature with his effete manner and attenuated figure, but his penetrating wit, learning and unconventionality assured him a key position not only in Bloomsbury but also in English literary life.

His menage-a-trois with Ralph Partridge and Dora Carrington has been portrayed in the film Carrington, in 1995; it was Strachey's death from cancer that propelled the heartbroken Carrington into suicide just two months after his death.

Source:

• Charleston: An Artist's Home. Available at www.charleston.org.uk