Penniless virgins. Reckless dukes. Flappers. Airmen. Suffragettes. Barbara Cartland made them fall in love. She wrote 723 books without touching a typewriter: instead, she reclined on her sofa with a Pekinese on her lap - and romantic fiction billowed out of her.
This dazzling biography reveals the woman behind the powder and mascara - a clever, socially precarious writer navigating a twentieth-century world of war-damaged men, class conflict and sexual peril.
After 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.
From country house weekends to Fleet Street offices, from Mayfair bedrooms to the divorce court, Matthew Sweet traces Cartland's extraordinary journey through a century of upheaval. Here are terrorist plots, psychic seances, suppressed scandals, plagiarism battles in the cutthroat world of romance publishing - and a surprising turn as a campaigner for Romany rights.
Drawing on unprecedented access to Cartland's vast archives and firsthand accounts from those who knew her, Sweet delivers a wonderfully entertaining study of class, fame, scandal and self-aggrandisement. Part satire, part biography, part social history, The Great Dictator reveals how a literary legend was made.
| ISBN: | 9781399715799 |
| Publication date: | 10th September 2026 |
| Author: | Matthew Sweet |
| Publisher: | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 320 pages |
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
| Other Genres: |
THE PERFECTLY OUTRAGEOUS BIOGRAPHY OF QUEEN OF ROMANCE BARBARA CARTLANDSHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE Penniless virgins. Reckless dukes.
The Great Dictator features in the following genres: Biographies & Autobiographies, Biography: writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Paperback, Hardback. £22.50, down from the £25.00 cover price. In Stock.
The Great Dictator was written by Matthew Sweet and published by Hodder & Stoughton
The Great Dictator has 320 pages
£22.50, reduced from £25.00. In Stock.
