'How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis?' The author asks at the beginning of this work of literary biography and investigative journalism. The pair, of course, is Gertrude Stein, the modernist master 'whose charm was as conspicuous as her fatness' and 'thin, plain, tense, so...

'How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis?' The author asks at the beginning of this work of literary biography and investigative journalism. The pair, of course, is Gertrude Stein, the modernist master 'whose charm was as conspicuous as her fatness' and 'thin, plain, tense, sour' Alice B Toklas, the 'worker bee'.