# The Great Dictator

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/matthew-sweet/the-great-dictator

![The Great Dictator](https://quivercdn.com/covers/hodder-stoughton/matthew-sweet/the-great-dictator_978-13-9971-579-9.jpg?v=2026-04-27%2002%3A25%3A29)

- Authors: [Matthew Sweet](https://www.bookquiver.com/matthew-sweet)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 2026-09-10

## Description

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.

## Editions

### The Great Dictator

- Publisher: hodder_stoughton
- Medium: audio
- ISBN: 978-13-9971-582-9
- Published: 2026-09-10
- Language: en_GB

### The Great Dictator

- Publisher: hodder_stoughton
- ISBN: 978-13-9971-579-9
- Pages: 1
- Published: 2026-09-10
- Language: en_GB

### The Great Dictator

- Publisher: hodder_stoughton
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-13-9971-581-2
- Published: 2026-09-10
- Language: en_GB