I had never heard of Celia and Mamaine Paget, the twin sisters at the heart of this book. Famous in British society for their beauty, they were also accomplished women who knew, seemingly, everyone, and had close relationships with writers and intellectuals like Orwell and Camus.

Their lives were certainly interesting, but it’s a bit sad too as they mostly throw all their energies towards supporting the men in their lives; I wonder what we would have gotten if less creative energy and attention had gone into assisting with Arthur Koestler’s work, for instance (uncredited of course.)

An interesting look at this period in history, but it’s hard to keep track of all the side characters and all their long histories as they enter and leave the story. I was honestly skimming a bit by the end.

I really enjoyed how well everything worked with the nonfiction book. I was enjoying the idea of learning about the sisters. It had a great overall feel to it and was well-researched. I thought Ariane Bankes wrote this and how it was engaging and glad it worked overall.

This is the fascinating story of the lives of twin sisters, Celia and Mamaine Paget. Celia's daughter pieces together their extraordinary lives in an affectionate and loving homage. The twins found themselves at the centre of an incredible cultural shift as they befriended some of the greatest thinkers, writers and artists of the Twentieth Century. Love affairs with Albert Camus, marriage to Arthur Koestler, marriage proposals from George Orwell, This is a book that is littered with names and tales that seem so strange you find yourself questioning whether all this can be true, except that it is and there are photographs to prove it.

Ariane Bankes' "The Quality of Love" offers a biography of beautiful twin sisters, set against the backdrop of the turn of the century. Through meticulous family research and vivid storytelling, Bankes brings to life the remarkable journey of these sisters, highlighting the challenges and triumphs they faced in an era of great change, alongside great relationships.

This was an interesting look at a time that I did not know a ton about at a personal level I feel like I got to know both of the women quite well in the book and the rest of the family. I really felt like reading a diary, or a memoir times. It was engaging and lively. I appreciate the work that was put into the book. It really was entertaining and not dry at all. I think twins are always interesting so that was a bonus to this book. I really recommended for a personal look at a interesting time.

This is definitely more family memoir than biography, written as it is by the daughter of Celia Paget, one of the twins. I found it surprisingly distant in terms of the twins themselves and more attention seems to be given to some of their famous lovers and friends, most of whom are men such as Arthur Koestler (married to Mamaine), Albert Camus (Mamaine's lover and friend) and George Orwell.

I accept that this generation of women who were brought up essentially uneducated and without expectations beyond catching a man were socially and culturally constrained, but the Paget twins, however beautiful, don't do much that is interesting in themselves though they certainly meet lots of interesting people, not least Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

I expected that the primary sources of letters and diaries would be more intimate or enlightening but they are underused in the book and fade in comparison to, say, quotations from de Beauvoir.

Overall, I felt this is quite a one-note narrative with digressions into more interesting people and events where the twins are marginal: Jessica Mitford, for example, who was briefly at school with Pagets gets a whole anecdote about running away to the Spanish Civil War just because she stays with the Pagets.

I'm all for excavating the lives of women who have been ignored by history but the Pagets are more bystanders than players and there's little here in their few letters about the troubled times and huge social changes they lived through.