The Great Dictator
On sale
10th September 2026
Price: £25
‘An excellent, compassionate biography of the wildly prolific romantic novelist’. The Guardian
‘Sweet writes with great wit and brio but also considerable sympathy’. Observer
‘Fantastically enjoyable, drily hilarious and incredibly well-researched’. Literary Review
‘Matthew Sweet has given the life-story of this icon of chiffon-and-pearls the telling it deserves – wry, affectionate, and very readable.’ Louis Theroux
‘The most genius, compelling, jaw-dropping, access-all-areas biography of Barbara Cartland.’ India Knight
‘This book is superb. A psychologically acute rendering of a publishing phenomenon.’ Jenny Colgan
Penniless virgins. Reckless dukes. Flappers. Airmen. Suffragettes. Barbara Cartland made them fall in love. She wrote 723 books without touching a typewriter: instead, she reclined on her sofa with a Pekinese on her lap – and romantic fiction billowed out of her.
This dazzling biography reveals the woman behind the powder and mascara – a clever, socially precarious writer navigating a twentieth-century world of war-damaged men, class conflict and sexual peril.
After 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.
From country house weekends to Fleet Street offices, from Mayfair bedrooms to the divorce court, Matthew Sweet traces Cartland’s extraordinary journey through a century of upheaval. Here are terrorist plots, psychic seances, suppressed scandals, plagiarism battles in the cutthroat world of romance publishing – and a surprising turn as a campaigner for Romany rights.
Drawing on unprecedented access to Cartland’s vast archives and firsthand accounts from those who knew her, Sweet delivers a wonderfully entertaining study of class, fame, scandal and self-aggrandisement. Part satire, part biography, part social history, The Great Dictator reveals how a literary legend was made.
‘Sweet writes with great wit and brio but also considerable sympathy’. Observer
‘Fantastically enjoyable, drily hilarious and incredibly well-researched’. Literary Review
‘Matthew Sweet has given the life-story of this icon of chiffon-and-pearls the telling it deserves – wry, affectionate, and very readable.’ Louis Theroux
‘The most genius, compelling, jaw-dropping, access-all-areas biography of Barbara Cartland.’ India Knight
‘This book is superb. A psychologically acute rendering of a publishing phenomenon.’ Jenny Colgan
Penniless virgins. Reckless dukes. Flappers. Airmen. Suffragettes. Barbara Cartland made them fall in love. She wrote 723 books without touching a typewriter: instead, she reclined on her sofa with a Pekinese on her lap – and romantic fiction billowed out of her.
This dazzling biography reveals the woman behind the powder and mascara – a clever, socially precarious writer navigating a twentieth-century world of war-damaged men, class conflict and sexual peril.
After 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.
From country house weekends to Fleet Street offices, from Mayfair bedrooms to the divorce court, Matthew Sweet traces Cartland’s extraordinary journey through a century of upheaval. Here are terrorist plots, psychic seances, suppressed scandals, plagiarism battles in the cutthroat world of romance publishing – and a surprising turn as a campaigner for Romany rights.
Drawing on unprecedented access to Cartland’s vast archives and firsthand accounts from those who knew her, Sweet delivers a wonderfully entertaining study of class, fame, scandal and self-aggrandisement. Part satire, part biography, part social history, The Great Dictator reveals how a literary legend was made.