Sybille Bedford

Sybille Bedford was born in Charlottenburg, Germany, and was privately educated in Italy, England and France. She published her first book, A Visit to Don Otavio: A Traveller's Tale from Mexico, in 1953. Three years later she published A Legacy, which was described by Nancy Mitford as 'one of the very best novels I've ever read'. Since then she has also written the novels A Favourite of the Gods (1965), A Compass Error (1969) and Jigsaw (1989), which was shortlisted for the Booker prize. The Best We Can Do: The Trial of Doctor Adams (1958; Penguin 1989) started her on a new direction, and she attended some of the most important criminal and political trials of our times, notably the Auschwitz trial at Frankfurt, the trial of Jack Ruby in Dallas and the Lady Chatterley's Lover case. Her researches in England, France, Germany and Switzerland produced material for her book The Faces of Justice, published in 1960. She is the author of As It Was (1990) and the two volume authorized biography of Aldous Huxley. Sybille Bedford has contributed literary criticism and articles on travel, food, wine and the law to numerous publications, including the Spectator, TLS, Observer, Harpers and Queen, Vogue, the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Esquire, Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.

Sybille Bedford is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Vice-President of PEN. She was awarded the OBE in 1981 and a C.Lit in 1994. She has lived in France, England, New York and Italy, and now lives in London.