Peter Conradi’s ‘masterpiece’ of a memoir ranges from his European Jewish forebears who came to Britain in the Victorian era to novelist and philosopher Iris Murduch, whose biography Conradi wrote.

He writes movingly of their close relationship, of his public school and life on a kibbutz, of participating in the early years of gay rights, and becoming a writer.

Peter J. Conradi is English Professor Emeritus at Kingston University. Family Business includes a cast of characters ranging from his exotic European Jewish forebears to Dame Iris Murdoch, whose authorised biography he wrote.

Charlotte Mendelson has written four novels, one non-fiction book about her tragic gardening obsession, Rhapsody in Green, much literary journalism and work for radio, and is Gardening Correspondent for the New Yorker. Her most recent novel, Almost English, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. When We Were Bad was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year in the Observer, Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator. Her second novel, Daughters of Jerusalem, won both the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award.