Sybille Bedford : an appetite for life

Born in Germany to aristocratic parents, Sybille Bedford's (1911-2006) life contained all the grand feeling and seismic event of the twentieth century: war and peace, love and trauma, friendship and death, as well as the need to write and rescue something from this wreckage. In her forties she published her breakthrough novel, continuing to publish until her early nineties, writing some of the outstanding and most original novels, memoirs and travel books of the century. A bon viveur, lover of French wine and cuisine, and admired by her peers, she roamed from country to country in search of fresh experience, with ear and eye attuned to her surroundings, typewriter at the ready. Full of intense friendships, a fierce commitment to the craft of writing, as well as an insatiable appetite for love and sex, Sybille Bedford blazed her own path in her life and her art.