Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc

Vita Sackville-West mostly published novels, but also a few biographies, and this one is apparently the most well-known. I doubt that it's often read: it's long, detailed, has many elegant maps and eleven appendices including family trees and speculative genealogies. It's a proper historian's book, and has probably been superceded several times since 1936. History … Continue reading Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The Life of Hilda Matheson, OBE

Over on Vulpes Libris I am wading through the 800 letters that Michael Carney used to construct his biography of Hilda Matheson. She was the BBC's first Director of Talks, and Vita Sackville West's lover (one of them) between 1929 and 1931. Her letters to Vita have ensured that her heroic struggles as a lesbian feminist … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The Life of Hilda Matheson, OBE →

Vita Sackville-West’s No Signposts in the Sea

This is Vita Sackville’s West’s last novel, and it is exquisite. For once I agree with the blurb on the back of the Virago edition: ‘this haunting, elegiac tale, published the year before her death, is her last and finest novel’. I do NOT agree with Victoria Glendinning, who wrote an introduction, who says that … Continue reading Vita Sackville-West’s No Signposts in the Sea →