Ariane Bankes' New Book: The Quality of Love

In her new book The Quality of Love, published by Duckworth on 2nd May, Ariane Bankes conjures the closely entwined lives of identical twins Celia and Mamaine Paget and their circle, and uses the letters and diaries in her possession to flesh out the twins’ true relationships with Orwell, Arthur Koestler and Albert Camus, among others.Born in 1916, orphaned at the age of twelve, the twins were bright and beautiful enough to overcome their scant education and flourish among Europe’s intelligentsia in the mid-years of the last century. Celia, then working at Polemic, was one of the women to whom Orwell proposed marriage after the death of Eileen; they were introduced by Celia’s twin sister Mamaine and her partner (and later husband) Arthur Koestler, who invited both to spend Christmas of 1945 with them in their house in Snowdonia, in the hopes that this would prove a match. Koestler also planned to further with Orwell their plan for their proposed League for the Rights of Man over the Christmas visit.Celia declined Orwell’s proposal but they formed a deep friendship which continued until his death, and it was to Celia, by now working at the Information Research Department, that Orwell gave his list of suspected ‘fellow travellers’ in 1949. Mamaine, meanwhile, lived and travelled with Koestler from Wales to Paris, the newly minted state of Israel, upstate New York, and Berlin in 1950 for the Conference of Cultural Freedom, for which Koestler wrote the manifesto.The Quality of Love throws an entirely personal and oblique light on the period and some of its key protagonists and developments.