Sybille Bedford A Life

From the celebrated biographer of Nancy Mitford, and Evelyn Waugh: a full and fascinating biography--the very first--of the long-admired and universally-acclaimed English writer. When Sybille Bedford died in 2006 at the age of 94, she had written ten books, including four novels and a biography of Aldous Huxley. Her novels--the last of which was shortlisted for the Booker--all fictionalized her extraordinarily colorful, peripatetic life and dramatic family history. Born just outside Berlin, she lived alternately in Baden, the south of France, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and London. As an adolescent she was mentored by Aldous Huxley . . . Martha Gellhorn convinced her to write her first novel, A Legacy, which would finally be published in 1956 . . . in the 1960s she wrote for magazines and newspapers, covering nearly 100 trials including that of Auschwitz officials, and Jack Ruby's for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald . . . she was an important figure in the lesbian community in Europe and America . . . and though she often found herself in dire financial straits, her life was just as often underwritten by devoted men or her women lovers. She was possessed of a fierce intelligence, wit, curiosity, compassion, and unstinting engagement with all the vagaries and variety of life. And Selina Hastings has brilliantly captured the woman and the writer in all the richness of her character and achievements.