The author recounts anecdotes of his parents, Vanessa and Clive Bell, his aunt, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Anthony Blunt, and other British writers and artists Bell is an artist, art critic, academic, and writer whose biography of his aunt, Virginia Woolf (LJ 11/1/72), was highly praised. He has now written a collection of anecdotal biographical sketches of the members of Bloomsbury, the group of London artists, writers, and intellectuals who lived and worked together from about 1900 to 1940. His subjects include Vanessa and Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster, David Garnett, and a new non-Bloomsbury folk-art historian and reputed spy, Anthony Blunt. Bell does not provide comprehensive biographies but rather personal reflections and memories, some very funny, of people he knew from his childhood. One learns much about these people and about Bell himself. His work is such a pleasure to read that it is recommended to everyone and is essential for British literature collections.?Judy Mimken, Boise P.L., Id. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Curiosity about the Bloomsbury group seems to fluctuate capriciously, but for readers who are aficionados, this book by Virginia Woolf's nephew and biographer will doubtless be of interest. Bell mentions that he set out to write an autobiography but thought better of it, opting instead to portray the literary figures and visual artists he knew so well through a series of vignettes. Reminiscence is key to Bell's prose portraits of his parents, Vanessa and Clive Bell, as well as Leonard Woolf, Ottoline Morrell, and other luminaries and lesser-known members associated with Bloomsbury. There is a bit of autobiography, but mainly Bell recalls encounters and events with individuals who, although they have been subjected to much prior scrutiny, are shown here in the more intimate, albeit brief, character studies derived from Bell's memories. Alice Joyce Brief, disjointed autobiographical remembrances of Bloomsbury's great and not-so-great from one of its last surviving members. From Maynard Keynes to the Stracheys, the gang's all here, but broadly sketched with a handful of usually unremarkable anecdotes that rarely reflect novelist and biographer Bell's (The Brandon Papers, 1985; Virginia Woolf, 1972; etc.) unique access. Instead of insights, we are treated to reminiscences of pleasant picnics and visits to art museums or a party where someone behaved not quite appropriately. Bell is a little more revealing when he turns to the members of his extended family and their byzantine relationships. He includes sketches of them all: His parents, critic Clive Bell and painter Vanessa Bell, and both her lovers, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, as well as Grant's lover David ``Bunny'' Garnett, who later married Vanessa's daughter by Grant, Angela. Bell treats all this potentially prurient material in a formal, no-sex-please-we're- British manner that comes across not so much as tactful as strangely detached. His emotional tone is the same whether he is writing about distant acquaintances, such as the notorious traitor Anthony Blunt, or about his father's many infidelities. In fact, the tone throughout tends toward a cool, low-key flatness, though there are moments of wit and perception, even revelation. Usually Bell is a first-rate biographer. His book on Virginia Woolf is sympathetic, incisive, and cogently coherent. Perhaps this book's fatal flaw is its structuring device, an awkward mix of autobiography and biography. But nothing hangs together. It is like flipping through an artist's sketchbook, everything raw and disordered. Or worse, like sitting in someone's living room and being forced to go through their family photo albums. (18 b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. A cheerful, amiable, charitable account of Bloomsbury's men and women, by a son of one such couple -- Janet Malcolm As many of these Bloomsbury figures have already generated extensive literature, the reader might justifiably wonder if there is anything more to be said. . . . It is not only that Bell, reasoning carefully, has new things to say, he is determined also to banish tendentiousness and pedantry with his sense of fun! -- Francis Spaulding Times Literary Supplement In Bloomsbury Recalled, Quentin Bell has written an extraordinary memoir of the circle of intellectuals in London early in this century know as the Bloomsbury group. Bell offers remarkable judgments about and recollections of each of the notable people among whom he came of age. Here are Bell's candid portraits of his parents, Clive and Vanessa Bell - Virginia Woolf's sister - Vanessa's lover, Duncan Grant, and of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, and others who frequented Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and Charleston, the Bells' country place in Sussex. The stories of this enchan