Freud's Wizard

Ernest Jones was one of the shapers of the twentieth century. He established psychoanalysis in Britain and wote gripping popular works such as Hamelet and the Oedipus Complex and On the Nightmare, which made Freudian theory available to the likes of Sir Lawrence Olivier and Sylvia Plath. He presided over the translation of Freud's work into English and, in 1938, daringly flew to Vienna to rescue Freud from the Nazi threat. In the 1950s he caped his life's achievement by writing the three-volume biography of Freud that became an international bestseller and defined psychoanalysis for future generations. Biographer Brenda Maddox uncovers the gripping drama of the life of this intrepid Welshman. She investigates his early troubles with the law, his conversion to psychoanalyssi, his long friendship with Freud-expressed in 671 letters-and even his peculiar passion for figure skating.