About

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. Broadcaster and journalist Matthew Sweet reveals the woman behind the powder and mascara in The Great Dictator, a dazzling new biography that’s part satire, part biography and part social history. Join Sweet and discover how a literary legend was made.

Part of Ilkley Literature Festival