The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet review – the fabulous life of Barbara Cartland

A brilliant new biography that does it subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else didBarbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward dukes, damaged airmen or misunderstood surgeons. Meanwhile Miss Savory, Mrs Smith or Mrs Morgan, picked for being unfidgety and sneezeless, would take everything down in immaculate Pitman shorthand. Cartland reckoned on being able to polish off 8,000 words a day. “In this way,” she told one of the many reporters who quizzed her on her astonishing productivity, “the typescript for an 80,000-word novel is finished in a fortnight.” At her peak she was pushing out 23 books a year which added up to 723 in total. Only Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare topped her lifetime sales of 750m.Cartland was a dictator in other ways, too. Husbands, dogs, houses and the local council were all ex