SOURCE: A review of Secret Muses, in The Economist, March 15, 1997, Vol. 342, no. 8008, p. S15.

[The following review briefly assesses Kavanagh's depiction of Frederick Ashton and his world in Secret Muses.]

A man can sometimes be defined more by the qualities he lacks than by those he possesses. Frederick Ashton, whose career, together with those of Margot Fonteyn and Ninette de Valois, virtually describes the history of English ballet, might be expected to have been a formidably authoritative figure, a match for the professionals he collaborated with, something high-powered along the lines of a George Balanchine or a Serge Diaghilev. Not at all: constitutionally lazy, never able to read a score, bored by teaching, vague at times as to the exact steps he wanted, Ashton ambushed his elusive muse more obliquely. He knew what he was after, but what Julie Kavanagh brings out in this sympathetic and perceptive biography...