Sybille Bedford by Selina Hastings
The first full and intimate biography of writer and bon viveur Sybille Bedford 'A fantastic read' India Knight, Sunday Times 'A wonderful biography' Sara Wheeler, Spectator Born in Germany to aristocratic parents, Sybille Bedford's (1911-2006) life contained all the grand feeling and seismic event of the twentieth century: war and peace, love and trauma, friendship and death, as well as the need to write and rescue something from this wreckage. Openly gay, Bedford once said 'I wish I'd written more books and spent less time being in love. It's very difficult doing both at the same time.' In her forties she published her breakthrough novel, A Legacy, continuing to publish until her early nineties, writing some of the outstanding and most original novels, memoirs and travel books of the century. Bedford's father died when she was just fourteen and her mother, a great socialite and litterateur, fell victim to a debilitating morphine addiction. Striking out on her own, Bedford fell under the spell of Aldous Huxley, who was to become her friend and mentor. Staying with Aldous and his wife Maria in their sunlit villa in the south of France between the wars were some of the happiest and most enlivening years of Bedford's life - even as she failed and failed again at finding her own voice on the page. And yet it was these years that would provide the material for Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education, widely considered to be her masterwork and which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989. A bon viveur, lover of French wine and cuisine, and admired by her peers ('One of the most dazzling practitioners of English prose' Bruce Chatwin once commented) she roamed from country to country - Germany, France, England, Italy and the United States - in search of fresh experience, with ear and eye attuned to her surroundings, typewriter at the ready. Full of intense friendships (Martha Gellhorn and Elizabeth Jane Howard among them), a fierce commitment to the craft of writing, as well as an insatiable appetite for love and sex, Sybille Bedford blazed her own path in her life and her art. *A DAILY TELEGRAPH, THE TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020*
A wonderful biography.. elegant, deft and restrained -- Sara Wheeler * Spectator *
Remarkably candid, minutely detailed and compulsively readable -- Rebecca Wallersteiner * Lady *
So good, so full of naughty detail, evocation and grudging affection -- Barry Humphries * Oldie *
Selina Hastings's wonderful, gossipy biography is a gem -- Lucy Atkins * Sunday Times, *Books of the Year* *
[Bedford's life is] elegantly related by Selina Hastings, the author of finely wrought, literate biographies . . . It is to be hoped that Sybille Bedford, a largely sympathetic and very readable biography, will bring new readers to Bedford's oeuvre -- Brooke Allen * New York Times *
An extraordinary story -- Laura Freeman * The Times *
A fantastic read [. . .] I can't express how wonderful her novels are, or this biography, [. . .] populated by the [. . .] madly clever, slightly louche, culturally omnivorous [and] sexually fluid -- India Knight * Sunday Times *
[A] richly entertaining biography -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail, *Book of the Year* *
I found myself gripped from the first page to the last, astonished by the pace of revelation -- Barnaby Rogerson * Oldie *
[A] scrupulous biography -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian *
Remarkably candid, minutely detailed and compulsively readable -- Rebecca Wallersteiner * Lady *
So good, so full of naughty detail, evocation and grudging affection -- Barry Humphries * Oldie *
Selina Hastings's wonderful, gossipy biography is a gem -- Lucy Atkins * Sunday Times, *Books of the Year* *
[Bedford's life is] elegantly related by Selina Hastings, the author of finely wrought, literate biographies . . . It is to be hoped that Sybille Bedford, a largely sympathetic and very readable biography, will bring new readers to Bedford's oeuvre -- Brooke Allen * New York Times *
An extraordinary story -- Laura Freeman * The Times *
A fantastic read [. . .] I can't express how wonderful her novels are, or this biography, [. . .] populated by the [. . .] madly clever, slightly louche, culturally omnivorous [and] sexually fluid -- India Knight * Sunday Times *
[A] richly entertaining biography -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail, *Book of the Year* *
I found myself gripped from the first page to the last, astonished by the pace of revelation -- Barnaby Rogerson * Oldie *
[A] scrupulous biography -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian *
Selina Hastings is a writer and journalist, biographer of Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford and Rosamund Lehmann and, in The Red Earl, of her father.
She is the winner of the Marsh Biography Prize, the Spear's Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Biographers' Club Lifetime Services to Biography Award.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781784741136 |
| ISBN 10 | 1784741132 |
| Title | Sybille Bedford |
| Author | Selina Hastings |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2020-11-12 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |