The Great Dictator

THE PERFECTLY OUTRAGEOUS BIOGRAPHY OF QUEEN OF ROMANCE BARBARA CARTLAND **LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'a comic gem of a biography' - Craig Brown 'Sweet writes with great wit and brio' - Observer 'Every page is a cliff-hanger' - The Spectator 'Fantastically enjoyable' - Literary Review 'Outrageously entertaining' - The Bookseller 'wry, affectionate and very readable' - Louis Theroux 'jaw-dropping' - India Knight 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. 'I really think this book might become the sleeper hit of the Christmas rush'. Robert McCrum 'An excellent, compassionate biography of the wildly prolific romantic novelist'.