Quicksands

Beginning in 1956 with the publication of A Legacy Sybille Bedford has narrated - in fiction and non-fiction - what has been by turns her sensuous harrowing altogether remarkable life. In this magnificent memoir she moves from Berlin during the Great War to the artists' set on the C te d'Azur of the 1920s through lovers mentors seducers and friends and from genteel yet shabby poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea. Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a home-cooked meal or tracing the heart-rending outline of an intimate betrayal she offers spellbinding reflections on how history imprints itself on private lives.