Sybille Bedford An Appetite for Life by Selina Hastings - 2020 -432 Pages

 Sybille Bedford An Appetite for Life by Selina Hastings  - 2020 - 432 Pages 

March 16, Berlin, Germany 

February 17, 2006 - London, England 

Previously I have pasted upon two biographies of authors from Selina Hastings, on Rosamond Lehmann and also one on W. Somerset Maugham.

Both of the biographies are marvellous so I was delighted to find her latest work Sybille Bedford An Appetite for Life by Selina Hastings available via Libby,

She had the bitter sadness of losing her much loved father when she was fourteen, and the misfortune to have to manage living with her mother Lisa,needy, selfish, anti-maternal, irresponsible, and later to be her carer before the drug-addicted Lisa was sent back to Hitler’s Germany for enforced detox treatment under the care of her own elderly mother, where she soon died. These difficult life circumstances deserve commiseration and sympathy.

 But throughout the rest of the biography Sybille turned into an amiable freeloading sociable partygoer, a growing authority on wine and an excellent cook and gourmand, who talked about writing a novel for twenty years before actually getting down to writing it.

As Sybille was so very, very fortunate in the friends who supported her throughout her life we have to assume that she was charming, delightful, fun and nice to have around. I can’t think that merely being an orphaned deserving cause would have been enough to warrant the colossal generosity and freely given accommodation, cheques and trips to and from the USA that so many of her friends bestowed upon She went through lovers like other women might go through hats or a pair of shoes, mostly women but a few men thrown in the mix.  

Hastings details the reasons for Sybille's hatred of her native Germany and her love for France.  Sybille in an arranged marriage, the himosexual groom was paid, was able to get a visa to England just before the Germans occupied Paris.  The account of her trip to Mexico was very interesting.  

Selina Hastings is a writer and journalist, biographer of Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, Rosamund Lehmann, Sybille Bedford and, in The Red Earl, of her father.

She is the winner of the Marsh Biography Prize, the Spear's Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Biographers' Club Lifetime Services to Biography Award.