Article: Love affair at a high pitch; Meeting a celebrated castrato in a house off Leicester Square was the start of an impassioned but doomed liaison.

Byline: BERYL BAINBRIDGE

Susanna, the Captain and the Castrato

by Linda Kelly

(Starhaven, [pounds sterling]9)

ANYONE interested in the lives of those persons who reached the peak of their notoriety towards the end of the 18th century - nowadays they would be classed as celebrities - cannot fail to find this book both exciting and curious.

In 1792, a country house in Surrey became the refuge for a group of French aristocrats fleeing from the Revolution; they included Talleyrand, the risque Madame de Stael, her lover the Comte de Narbonne and his close friend General d'Arblay.

Staying nearby was the novelist Fanny ...

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