{"product_id":"the-great-dictator","title":"The Great Dictator","description":"\u003cp\u003ePenniless 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Great Dictator\u003c\/i\u003e reveals how a literary legend was made.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Hodder \u0026 Stoughton","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57297862000984,"sku":"9781399715799","price":31.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781399715799.jpg?v=1780454727","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/the-great-dictator","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}