A generation ago Mann ranked not only as a great writer, but as a prophet and something of a cultural hero. Today this triple role no longer, seems to fit - not simply because of the inevitable posthumous debunking and demythologising, but because Mann, though well able to play a public role when needed, was not especially suited to it. At heart he remained very much the turn of the century professional writer sedentary, bookish, devoted to his craft, analytical and introspective, burgerlich and North German to the core. The son of a Lubeck merchant and senator who died in middle age, Mann was somewhat overshadowed in early years by his elder brother Heinrich, his mother's favourite, and throughout their long lives and distinguished careers the two novelist brothers were frequently in rivalry with one another and sometimes estranged. Though highly strung and intellectually idealistic, Thomas was also, ambitious and hard working, fond of fame, and in view of his later "liberal" and anti nationalist stance, he was almost chauvinistically pro German during the first World War. Later, persecution by the Nazis drove him from his family home in Munich to exile in Switzerland, and from there to America, where he became the Grand Old Man of Letters and won the Nobel Prize. Though, Mann had strong homosexual leanings, he was the father of six children and in private life relied much on his strong minded wife, Katia. (Incidentally, a photograph of the original of the beautiful boy in Death in Venice, Wladyslaw Moes, shows him as surprisingly chubby cheeked and Lord Fauntleroy-ish). This biography, over 600 pages long, is readable but determinedly pedestrian in style, and for the price we might have expected rather better quality paper.