Sybille Bedford

Going to law courts is a good education for a novelist. It provides you with the most extravagant material, and it teaches the near impossibility of reaching the truth. Sybille Bedford, Paris Review (1993)For The Faces of Justice (1961) Sybille Bedford journeyed through Europe to sit in the press box of the courts of law - high courts, low courts, police courts. In England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, she watched the prisoners at the bar, the accusing community arrayed against them, the advocates, the jurors, the judges on the bench. She saw justice being attempted under the law - the best we can do, the worst we can do - varying in subtle yet astonishing ways from country to country. The result is a story about justice, humanity and the individual - moving, dramatic, superbly observed, splendidly told.

Mexico, through the eyes of Sybille Bedford, is a country of passion and paradox: arid desert and shrieking jungle, harsh sun and deep shadow, violence and sentimentality. In her frank descriptions of the horrors of travel- trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish against her face- she gains our trust. But it is the charmed world of Don Otavio which steals our imagination. He is, she says, one of the kindest men I ever met. She stays in his crumbling ancestral mansion, living a life of provincial ease and observing with glee the intense theatricality of a Mexican neighbourhood.

One of Britains most stylish and accomplished writers. -- TelegraphOne autumn in the late nineteen-twenties for no particular reason at all, as it would seem, we began to live in France.Constanza and her young daughter step off a train in the French Riviera in the late 1920s without the slightest notion of where they are. But their story begins with Constanzas parents: a beautiful New England heiress, a Roman prince and the confused catastrophe of their marriage. An idyllic childhood spent in crumbling Roman palaces, sun-baked olive groves, at sumptuous parties and being taught by the most interesting men in Rome, is changed forever by a fatal clash of culture and an impulsive decision.In this elegant novel, Sybille Bedford tells the story of three generations of women, of Europe and America, and the turbulence of the early twentieth century.This is a dramatic companion novel to A Compass Error, also published by Daunt Books.Dazzling -- Bruce ChatwinSybille Bedford is the most sensual of writers. No one writes as she does about the smells and colours of the Mediterranean, about the pleasure of food and wine. --Victoria GlendinningA writer of commensurate artistry. -- Auberon WaughAn excellent stylist and a splendid narrator . . . and this is a very clever work. -- The New YorkerA study of the rich . . . an examination of love . . . and a statement of what Henry James either did not or would not know about the darker side of the portrait of the lady. Bedfords mind is radiant. Her alarming economy of style burns. -- V. S. Pritchett

This intensely remembered, partly autobiographical novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, describes the childhood of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the wars. When her father dies, she swaps life in a run-down German chateau for an exhilarating existence with her beautiful, talented and unreliable mother on the French Riviera. Sent away to England for schooling, the gypsy-like Billi ricochets between short-lived tutors and a life of reading, friends and public lectures. Returning to the Mediterranean, her unorthodox education - intellectual, emotional and sexual - continues among the vibrant community of artists, exiles and intellectuals who have colonised the coast, coaxing her towards a life of literature.

One of Britains most stylish and accomplished writers. -- TelegraphWhen Penguin released a new, unexpurgated edition of D.H. Lawrences Lady Chatterleys Lover in 1960 they were charged with the crime of publishing obscene material and made to defend the books literary merit in a court of law. Thus began one of the most famous trials of the 20th century.There to take it all in was Sybille Bedford who, with her trademark wit and flair, presents us with a play-by-play of the trial: from the prosecutions questioning of the novels thirteen unvarying sex scenes and its 66 swear words, to the dozens of witnesses who testified including the Bishop of Woolwich and E. M. Forster.Bedford gives us a timeless and dramatic account that captures one of the most fascinating and absurd moments in both legal and publishing history, when attitudes and morals shifted forever. Bedfords mind is radiant. Her alarming economy of style burns. -- V.S. PitchettAn excellent stylist and a splendid narrator. -- The New Yorker When the history of modern prose in English comes to be written, Sybille Bedford will have to appear in any list of its most dazzling practitioners. -- Bruce Chatwin

A powerful and merciless book a classic coming-of-age novel -- Hilary MantelWide windows, not yet shuttered at that hour, opened from the circular white-washed room on slopes of olives and the distant shimmering bay. Flavia turned seventeen, alone, entirely alone for the first time in her life . . .As the Second World War looms, Flavia is living in a small village in the South of France. She studies for her Oxford entrance, swims in the sea, eats at local cafes, and lives with the confidence and relish of youth.Drawn into the demi-monde of artists and writers, Flavia awakes to the pleasures and complications of adult life. Her world is overturned when she becomes fascinated by Andree beautiful, sophisticated, yet manipulative and is caught up in a devastating intrigue.This is a dramatic companion novel to A Favourite of the Gods, also published by Daunt Books.There will always be people for whom her books are part of their minds life, and people who are discovering her for the first time as if entering a lighted room. --Victoria GlendinningA mesmerising writer -- Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily TelegraphOne of our greatest writers -- Rosie BoycottThe lure of the sensual life, "the picnics, lobster salad, hock and seltzer and going to the opera, in Italy, in summer" . . . Bedford has the supreme novelists openness to chance experience, the ability to trace significant patterns in seemingly inconsequential things. -- The TimesSophisticated.... skilful... she demonstrates firm control of form and clarity of style. -- New Statesman

Bedfords ability to recreate landscape is matched only by her appetite for mouth-watering descriptions of exotic food . . . She cannot write a dull page. -- Financial TimesThe Naples boat was on time. Lightly one stepped ashore, and, after a brief, slow ascent, emerged into Piazza still warm under a late afternoon sun.In these eight evocative and transcendent essays, Sybille Bedford chronicles her adventures through Europe over a thirty year period. With her elegant prose and razor sharp insight, Bedford takes us on a propulsive journey dropping us into the passenger seat as she drives to meet Martha Gellhorn in Capri, taking us across the wind-swept piazzas of Venice in winter, and tantalizing our taste buds with a tour of the vineyards of Bordeaux.Packed with extraordinary excitement, Bedford shows us the world through her eyes the eyes of a seasoned traveller in all its beauty and wonder. Pleasures and Landscapes is a satisfyingly sensuous literary expedition told by one of the greatest travel writers of the 20th Century.When the history of modern prose in English comes to be written, Sybille Bedford will have to appear in any list of its most dazzling practitioners. -- Bruce ChatwinBedford writes of the lure of the sensual life, the picnics, lobster salad, hock and seltzer and going to the opera, in Italy, in summer . . . -- Times

In this deeply involved study of the German Upper Class before 1914 , Sybille Bedford has re-created a way of life in a manner that is absorbing, moving and sometimes very funny.

Continuación de la novela anterior de Bedford, aquí la protagonista es Flavia, la hija de Constanza, quien a sus diecisiete años será bruscamente apartada de su encierro libresco por la irresistible seduccion de dos experimentadas mujeres.

Con esta novela, finalista del Premio Booker 1989 y publicada en castellano un año más tarde, Salamandra inicia la recuperación de la obra de una de las grandes escritoras europeas de nuestro tiempo. Fallecida recientemente a los noventa y cuatro años, Sybille Bedford era hija de padre aleman y madre inglesa, y pertenecio a la ultima generacion de aristocratas que consideraban Europa su verdadera patria. Su obra narrativa, marcadamente autobiografica, se mueve con maestria en la sutil frontera que separa la memoria y la imaginacion, los recuerdos y la literatura, y constituye el testimonio mas autentico y conmovedor de una epoca de brillo y esplendor que acabo devorada por la tragedia.Fragmentos de vida se inicia en Alemania a finales de la Gran Guerra. Escrita en primera persona,Billi describe su infancia en el castillo de una pequeña localidad del gran ducado de Baden. Su madre ha huido con un amante y ellavive sola junto a su padre, miembro de la aristocracia bavara, en la estrechez y la precariedad. A los nueve años, la repentina muerte de su padre cambiara su destino: Billi abandona su ordenada vida en Alemania y comienza una existencia caotica y deslumbrante junto a su madre en Italia. Pronto sera enviada a Inglaterra, donde, sin mas tutela que sus propias lecturas

En estas soberbias y peculiares memorias, Sybille Bedford nos traslada en un viaje personal y épico desde el Berlín de la primera guerra mundial hasta Londres, Nueva York, París o Roma en la posguerra de la segunda contienda, pasando por la bohemia de artistas y escritores de la Cotê d'Azur en los años treinta.