Biography Archives - Bridport Literary Festival

Event 15 | Matthew Sweet | The Great Dictator

£16.50

Matthew Sweet - The Great Dictator - A Life of Barbara Cartland

Penniless virgins. Reckless dukes. Flappers. Airmen. Suffragettes. Barbara Cartland made them all 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. Making use of unprecedented access to Cartland’s archives, broadcaster Matthew Sweet’s wickedly funny biography reveals the woman behind the mascara. After 49 proposals, she chose the wrong man; what followed was a life stranger than any novel, including terrorist plots, seances, plagiarism battles, and even a surprise turn as a campaigner for Romany rights. Chaired by Vivian French.

When: Sunday 8 November 2026 @ 2.30 pm

Where: Electric Palace

Sponsored by: Susan Bradbury

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Event 46 | Lucy Hughes-Hallett | Cleopatra

£12.00

Lucy Hughes-Hallett - Cleopatra - Histories, Dreams and Distortions

For two thousand years, Cleopatra has been continually reinvented: medieval emblem of wifely devotion, Renaissance beauty, Romantic femme fatale and Hollywood temptress. Yet these archetypes tell us less about Egypt’s last pharaoh than about the preoccupations, racial politics and erotic fantasies of the cultures that constructed them. Samuel Johnson Prize-winning biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett examines the historical monarch alongside her legion of imaginary counterparts. From hostile Roman propaganda to modern pop culture, Hughes-Hallett disentangles the astute political strategist from centuries of myth-making. “Brilliant and discursive”, Antonia Fraser.

When: Thursday 12 November 2026 @ 1.00 pm

Where: Bull Ballroom

Sponsored by: Flora Hood

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Event 49 | Sara Wheeler | Jan Morris

£14.00

Sara Wheeler - Jan Morris - A Life

Jan Morris led a life as vast as her literary output. A pioneering journalist who scooped the 1953 Everest ascent, covered the Eichmann trial and authored acclaimed works on Venice and the British Empire, Morris was equally famed for her 1970s gender transition, a groundbreaking journey documented in her classic memoir, Conundrum. Award-winning biographer Sara Wheeler discusses her authorised life of the literary icon. Granted unrestricted access to Morris’s personal diaries and archives, Wheeler moves beyond the public persona to explore a brilliant, contradictory figure: a Welsh nationalist who wasn’t Welsh, an intrepid traveller who sought the meaning of home, and an unyielding romantic.

When: Thursday 12 November 2026 @ 5.30 pm

Where: Bridport Arts Centre

Sponsored by: Felicity Fairbairn

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Event 52 | Peter Stanford | Gaudi

£12.00

Peter Stanford - Gaudi - God’s Architect

Today Antoni Gaudíʼs unfinished basilica, La Sagrada Família,welcomes five million visitors a year. Yet its creator died in a pauper’s hospital after he was hit by a tram and mistaken for a tramp. What led him to this fate? Even in the centenary year of his death, much about this unworldly genius remains a mystery. Telegraph writer Peter Stanford tries to make sense of it, treading in the great man’s footsteps from the Catalan countryside to industrial Barcelona, a city in which Gaudi was at once a loner and a celebrity. This revelatory biography explores how the tragedies and triumphs of Gaudiʼs life connect, and how the architectʼs work drew on his religious faith. He talks to broadcaster Gill Pyrah.

When: Friday 13 November 2026 @ 10.00 am

Where: Bull Ballroom

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