Books by Sybille Bedford

In these eight evocative and unpredictable 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 tantalising our taste buds with a tour of the vineyards of Bordeaux. 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 twentieth century. 'Bedford's ability to recreate landscape is matched only by her appetite for mouth-watering descriptions of exotic food . . . She cannot write a dull page.' - Financial Times 'Bedford writes of the lure of the sensual life, the picni, lobster salad, hock and seltzer and going to the opera, in Italy, in summer . . .' - The Times '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

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 all the confidence and relish of youth. Drawn into the demi-monde of artists and writers, Flavia is awoken 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. 'A powerful and merciless book - a classic coming of age novel.' - Hilary Mantel 'The lure of the sensual life, the picnics, lobster salad, hock and seltzer and going to the opera, in Italy, in summer . . .' - The Times 'A mesmerising writer.' - Nicholas Shakespeare 'There will always be people for whom her books are part of their mind's life, and people who are discovering her for the first time as if entering a lighted room.' - Victoria Glendinning 'Sophisticated . . . skilful.' - New Statesman

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 Constanza's 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 and excitement of the early twentieth century. This is a dramatic companion novel to A Compass Error, also published by Daunt Books. 'One of Britain's most stylish and accomplished writers.' - Telegraph 'Sybille 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 Glendinning 'An excellent stylist and a splendid narrator . . . and this is a very clever work.' - New Yorker 'A 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. Bedford's mind is radiant. Her alarming economy of style burns. - V. S. Pritchett

'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.

Beginning in 1956 with the publication of A Legacy, Sybille Bedford has narrated - in fiction and non-fiction - what has been by turns her sensuous, harrowing, altogether remarkable life. In this magnificent memoir, she moves from Berlin during the Great War to the artists' set on the C te d'Azur of the 1920s, through lovers, mentors, seducers and friends, and from genteel yet shabby poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea. Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a home-cooked meal or tracing the heart-rending outline of an intimate betrayal, she offers spellbinding reflections on how history imprints itself on private lives.

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 - through bug-infested jungle, trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish slapping 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 life of a Mexican neighbourhood.