Until the summer of 1937, when Garnett was 18, she believed her biological father was Clive Bell, Vanessa's husband, rather than the mostly homosexual Grant, although the reality was an open secret within their immediate Bloomsbury circle.

In that year, Vanessa rented Charleston Farmhouse from the Gage estate, so that Duncan Grant, with whom she had fallen in love, and his lover, David Garnett, could work there as farm labourers; both were conscientious objectors.

The deception avoided servant gossip and preserved the possibility of a legacy from Clive Bell's father who had settled allowances on his grandchildren.

She left without any qualifications, spent several months living in Rome and in 1935 moved for a time to Paris, staying with the artist Zoum Walter and her writer husband Francois.

[13] She changed to the study of art at the Euston Road School, where she was taught by William Coldstream and Victor Pasmore, the latter of whom apparently reduced her to tears.

Despite their consternation, Angelica's parents did not inform their daughter of these details of Garnett's past, although various associates of the family did attempt to warn her against the marriage: John Maynard Keynes had her to tea.

[3] His novella, Aspects of Love (1955), dedicated to Angelica and involving similarly complicated domestic arrangements, was later adapted into a highly successful musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The book was direct and sharply critical in its description of her upbringing and relationship with her parents, revealing Bloomsbury's rather conventional inability to confront deep personal feelings.

[16] Garnett was the author of a second memoir, The Eternal Moment (1998), and published a volume of autobiographical fiction entitled The Unspoken Truth: A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories (2010).

She advised on the reconstruction of its fabrics, and on the selection and application of pigments; also talking at festivals and giving fund-raising lectures, including in America.

[12] She also worked with mosaics, designed book jackets and textiles, decorated pots, and, in the 1980s, began to create sculptures using found objects and materials.