Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century

Rebecca West’s wide-range writing career, as a novelist, journalist, travel and history writer and biographer, made her one of the most feted and feared woman of her day. Despite the acclaim she attracted throughout her life, her books were often best sellers, though her work has undeservedly fallen out of fashion. Rollyson has had exclusive access to West’s vast archive of letters, diaries, journals and manuscripts; interviewed her friends and family, many of whom speak out for the first time. He reveals new details about her affairs with H.G. Wells (by whom she had a son); the press magnate, Lord Beaverbrook; the renowned journalist, John Gunther; the Nuremberg judge, Francis Biddle; Charlie Chaplin and others. In a life of extremes, she was seen as a feminist, an evil mother, an ardent anti-Communist, and a gossip. When she died on the Ides of March 1983, aged 90, she was a Dame of the British Empire and had finally made it to the screen in Reds, a heroine of her age.