SOURCE: "Oh to Be a Little Freddie Ashton from Lima, Peru," in The Spectator, November 9, 1996, p. 53.

[In the following review of Secret Muses, Keates observes the private and professional features of the figure of Frederick Ashton that emerge in Kavanagh's biography.]

Lurking within the exotically bedecked, lavishly appointed saloons and antechambers of this palatial work, a novel or a film script eternally seeks to escape. At its opening a small boy watches a famous ballerina dance in a South American theatre and yearns to be the very creature who has so entranced him. By the close, having understandably failed to dance like Pavlova, he has instead gained celebrity as the creator of a brilliantly idiosyncratic choreography whose elegance and wit, entrancing to audiences, have given the Royal Ballet a memorable identity. In the space between, as if this were not already crammed enough with the hero's evident dedication...