She lived frantically ever after: the jaw-dropping life of Barbara Cartland
Matthew Sweet’s jaw-dropping life of Barbara Cartland opens with the grande dame reclining on her chaise longue in the library of Camfield Place, her home for 50 years. Here she could be found daily between 1.15 p.m. and 4 p.m., a ghoulish masquerade of femininity in a hot-pink taffeta cocktail gown with a snappy Pekinese nestling by her side. Her face, beneath the halo of Elnett-stiffened yellow hair, is an inch of white powder. There are two clownish circles of rouge on her cheeks and sticking plasters on her temples to tighten the skin. Gazing into the middle distance through tarantula-sized false eyelashes lathered in black boot polish, she is ‘talking, talking, talking’. (Boot polish applied with a toothbrush is preferable to mascara because it stays put when you cry.
