Nancy Mitford, fills in many of the blanks that Bedford, basically a reticent person, left even when writing obliquely of herself and a wide circle that included Martha Gellhorn and Thomas Mann. Gracefully written, largely sympathetic and very gossipy, Sybille Bedford: A Life takes as its point of departure Bedford’s quip to an interviewer: 'I wish I’d written more books and spent less time being in love. It’s very difficult doing both at the same time.' ... More a reporter than an interpreter, Ms. Hastings avoids assigning motives, though she rightly acknowledges Bedford’s remarkable gift for friendship.
... what a life it was! And now here we have it, elegantly related by Selina Hastings ... Much of this [romantic] material is not especially interesting. What is interesting is that Bedford so often had the upper hand in her own relationships ... It is to be hoped that Sybille Bedford, a largely sympathetic and very readable biography, will bring new readers to Bedford’s oeuvre.
Perhaps this scrupulous biography’s greatest achievement is to remind us that Bedford had a second string to her writerly bow. From the 1950s she became a high-grade court reporter, writing several long-form essays about legal cases, including the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial and the Profumo affair. Because writing journalism for a contracted fee didn’t count as 'art', Bedford finally found an ease and a fluency and a certain artisanal satisfaction in a job well done.
This is such a fantastic read ... Hastings’s delicious biography, with its abundance of intricate and intimate detail, is total heaven ... the material is so very rich ... There were many sexual bondings and relationships throughout Bedford’s long life, each fascinatingly detailed here ... I can’t express how wonderful [Bedford's] novels are, or this biography, which brings a fundamentally shy and private woman out into the light and is populated by the sorts of people who don’t seem to exist any more—madly clever, slightly louche, culturally omnivorous, sexually fluid, crisscrossing Europe and each other in search of fun and new ideas.
It’s a lot to do, conveying the zig-zagging narrative line of Bedford’s life. Selina Hastings is up to the job, displaying in this biography a deft skill with summary narrative ... But the real joy of this book is Hastings’ willingness and capability to center the reason her subject is notable at all—her writing—and to describe in detail how she wrote ... This book is full of vivid descriptions...of the act of writing ... My only criticism of Hastings account is that she could have told us more about Bedford as a reader. Although she was vastly well-read in multiple languages, this essential aspect of Bedford’s intellectual life comes in for discussion only on a few occasions ... But Hastings’ biography is one of the most complete accounts of a writer I have had the privilege to read.
Hastings’s approach to Bedford’s biography is similarly judicial. She enters her subject’s life through a side door, puts her witnesses in the box, and hears the evidence for and against Bedford’s literary merit. There will be no questions from the judge’s bench about Bedford’s politics, lesbianism, or antifeminism, no close readings of character or text, no analysis of motive. The biographer’s task is to preside over the rituals by which the truth is formally established by presenting, without prejudice, a full range of critical opinion ... Now that we have heard the whole of it, Bedford emerges as even more elusive than before; the books become less clear and harder to read emotionally. Because Selina Hastings, the spirit of biographical detachment, never says 'exactly what she thinks,' the book ends not with her own summing up but with the expert opinion of Brenda Wineapple, Bedford’s friend and a witness to her final years.
All of this is covered marvellously well in Bedford’s own work, which leaves her biographer the task of sorting through the endless love affairs ... It must have made Hastings’s task onerous and I fear the reader will grow weary of the lists ... As a companion to Bedford’s own writing, this biography could hardly be bettered. It is comprehensive and sympathetic, but not entirely uncritical. Could a thematic rather than a chronological chapter scheme have given it more zing? At least then the discerning reader could have skipped most of the lovers and gone straight to the heart of the matter, Bedford’s own glorious books.
It is an extraordinary story ... It is Hastings’s bad luck that many of the letters between Bedford and her partners and confidantes should be written in ickle, piggy-wiggy baby language. It is difficult to get a serious read on the relationships when they sound so very silly ... Hastings...writes with her hallmark elegance, insight and forgiveness. Bedford’s faults as a writer, friend and lover are laid bare and understood ... One might, however, wish for a quick snip here and there. The litany of schlösser, villas and Wiltshire manor houses tips into Private Eye’s 'What you didn’t miss . . .' territory.
...gossipy ... Notwithstanding all the detail in these packed pages, Hastings somehow never quite accounts for what must have been a case of extraordinary charisma ... Appropriately enough, Sybille Bedford makes just the right pendant to Selina Hastings’s excellent earlier biographies of Somerset Maugham and Evelyn Waugh. All three of these domineering, self-centered writers regularly behaved monstrously to others, sometimes unforgivably so. But their books, ah, their books!
Selina Hastings has written a wonderful biography, with lashings of lesbian lovers, which provides a soundtrack to one version of the 20th century ... Hastings has had the cooperation of the Bedford estate and full access to diaries and letters, and she and her researcher have delved heroically and judiciously. She is an accomplished stylist and her prose suits her subject: elegant, deft and restrained, as operatic arias ‘hiss’ from the horned gramophone in the schloss ... The word ‘arrogant’ rings through these pages like a knell and so does snobbery ... Hastings is too accomplished a biographer to pass judgment. She doesn’t have to. Bedford emerges from this fine book as an appalling figure—a monster, really, or a pig ... My favourite Bedford book is A Visit to Don Otavio (1953) ... this and A Legacy will stand the brutal test of time—as will Selina Hastings’s biography.
Hastings is impeccable on the facts of Bedford's life—almost every meal and certainly every trip and romantic fling is exhaustively detailed—yet she refrains from passing much comment on Bedford's character, instead letting Bedford's personal writings, and the not always admiring correspondence from her many friends, paint a picture of a much loved, self centred, convivial bon vivant. This book is necessary reading for Bedford fans, but for the absolute essence of Bedford's sly, sensual, singular voice, I'd perhaps favour her own words.
Although we are led here to believe that her literary reputation is on the rise, what veteran biographer Hastings dwells on most is the 'moveable feast' that appeared to define Bedford’s life ... The supporting cast includes Martha Gellhorn, whose writing guidance proved important, and Richard Olney, the expatriate American who codified French cooking and wine. Drawing from previously untapped correspondence and journals, Hastings dutifully pieces it all together.
Hastings’s just-the-facts manner keeps lovers and locales straight but largely ignores style ... we don’t hear much about what constitutes that distinctive voice, what makes this pleasure-loving writer such a pleasure to read.
A writer's long, passionate, peripatetic life. Hastings traces a 'complex web of love and friendship—and occasional hostility' that spun around Bedford, who worked hard to succeed as a writer, producing a travel book based on a stay in Mexico, several novels, a reverent biography of Aldous Huxley, and a memoir ... A sympathetic, engaging biography.
