The Great Dictator

<P><B><h3><b> THE PERFECTLY OUTRAGEOUS BIOGRAPHY OF QUEEN OF ROMANCE BARBARA CARTLAND</B><br><B>SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE</B><br><B>'deliciously well written' - Nigella Lawson</B><br><B>'a comic gem of a biography' - Craig Brown</B><br><B>'Sweet writes with great wit and brio' -</B><I><B> Observer</B></I><br><B>'Every page is a cliff-hanger' - </B><I><B>The Spectator</B></I><br><B>'Fantastically enjoyable' - </B><I><B>Literary Review</B></I><br><B>'Eye-popping' - </B><I><B>The London Standard</B></I><br><I><B>'</B></I><B>Outrageously entertaining' - </B><I><B>The Bookseller</B></I><br><B>'wry, affectionate and very readable' - Louis Theroux</B><br><B>'jaw-dropping' - India Knight </b></h3></B><br><br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>After 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.<br><br>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.<br><br>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, <I>The Great Dictator</I> reveals how a literary legend was made.</P>