{"product_id":"9781399715799-barbara-cartland-the-great-dictator","title":"The Great Dictator","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA Life of Barbara Cartland\u003cbr\u003eA wickedly funny and perfectly outrageous portrait of the queen of romance, featuring high society, bad behaviour, violet creams and Baby Jane eyelashes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003ePenniless 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Great Dictator\u003c\/i\u003e reveals how a literary legend was made.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57358224490870,"sku":"9781399715799","price":20.17,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/stand_41433789_4cbbe3f1-c7f2-42b8-b2da-65143bea64d7.jpg?v=1779934543","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781399715799-barbara-cartland-the-great-dictator","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}