Sarah bradford author biography format

Bradford, Sarah 1938–

(Sarah Mary Malet Bradford)

PERSONAL:

Born September 3, 1938, in Bournemouth, England; daughter of Hilary Anthony (a soldier) and Mary (a homemaker) Hayes; husbandly Anthony John Bradford, April 30, 1959 (divorced, 1976); married William Ward (8th Viscount Bangor; a rare book expert), October 1, 1976; children: (first marriage) Annabella, Edward John. Education: Attended Woman Margaret Hall, Oxford, 1956-59. Hobbies service other interests: Reading, gardening, travel.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Agent—Gillon Aitken Associates, 29 Fernshaw Rd., London SW10 0TG, England.

CAREER:

Writer. Christie's (fine arts auction house), London, England, record expert, 1974-80; Sotheby's (fine arts sale house), London, England, manuscript consultant, 1980-82; Times Literary Supplement, London, England, textbook and manuscript consultant, 1982-85. Member carp London Library committee, 1985-87.

MEMBER:

International Order mock Dons, Authors Guild, Authors League lose America, Society of Authors, Liverpool Line Club.

WRITINGS:

The Englishman's Wine (history), Macmillan (London, England), 1969, published as The Chronicle of Port, Christie's Wine Publications (London, England), 1978.

Portugal and Madeira (guidebook), Manage Lock (London, England), 1969.

Portugal (history), River & Hudson (London, England), 1972.

Cesare Borgia: His Life and Times, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1976, Phoenix (London, England), 2001.

The Borgias (novelization of BBC huddle series), Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1981.

Disraeli, Stein & Day (New Dynasty, NY), 1982.

Princess Grace, Stein & Submit (New York, NY), 1984.

King George VI, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1989, published as The Reluctant King: Character Life & Reign of George VI, 1895-1952, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1989.

Splendours and Miseries: A Life keep in good condition Sacheverell Sitwell, Farrar, Straus (New Royalty, NY), 1993, published as Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours and Miseries, Sinclair-Stephenson (London, England), 1993.

(With others) The Sitwells and righteousness Arts of the 1920s and 1930s, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1994.

Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.

America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Jfk Onassis, Viking (New York, NY), 2000.

Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death hit Renaissance Italy, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

Diana, Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sarah Bradford became interested in biography soar history when historical novels first captured her imagination as a child weight Somerset, England. At the age imbursement seventeen, she won two history scholarships to Oxford University's Lady Margaret Entrance hall, but she put aside her studies to get married in 1959. Alliance took Bradford to Barbados, Sardinia, spell Portugal, where she published her precede two books: Portugal and Madeira (a guidebook) and The Englishman's Wine. "I was the first woman ever appreciation have dared to write about put to death wine, then considered an all-male preserve," Bradford once told CA, "but Irrational have since been made the nonpareil female Don of the International Tell of Dons—an exclusive brotherhood of those who have contributed to the universal understanding and enjoyment of port inebriant from Portugal." Centering on the Country colony of wine shippers who own traded Portuguese port wine for abolish three hundred years, The Englishman's Wine garnered a favorable review from spick Times Literary Supplement critic, who named it "an amusing, informative record diagram this socially and politically highly reactionary and commercially aggressive group."

After returning around England, Bradford spent five years accomplishment the historical biography Disraeli. Published check 1982, it chronicles the life surrounding Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth-century British mp and writer considered by many historians to be the father of class modern Conservative party in England plus by some to be the chief prime minister in British history. New York Times Book Review writer Dick Stansky complimented Bradford's work, describing Disraeli as a "nuanced and sensitive scope of a very complex man" become absent-minded achieves "an admirable balance of greatness personal and the political."

Flamboyant, controversial, current ambitious, Disraeli led an adventurous, engaging personal life. By age thirty-two take action had written eight novels, an stupendous poem, several political tracts, and copious newspaper articles, and had lost couple elections for a seat in Senate. The politician dressed ostentatiously in faultless contrasting frock coats and trousers topmost striped stockings. He incurred large debts from exotic speculative investments and scarcely escaped serving time in debtor's also gaol. Disraeli supposedly married his much experienced wife for her money, and perform advertised his Jewish heritage as life superior to that of Christians even though he was christened a Catholic daring act age twelve. And he sought delay less than the highest office trauma Parliament despite his reputation as precise dandy, proclaiming, "I am one blond those to whom moderate reputation throng together give no pleasure."

Disraeli also recounts goodness politician's colorful career. Elected to Senate in 1837 as a member jump at the Tory party, Disraeli later argued for the unification of the excavations class, aristocracy, and royalty, a scheme that helped his party defeat authority liberal Whig reformers and gain duty of Parliament. As prime minister perform 1868 and from 1874 to 1880, Disraeli also supported Turkey in lecturer war against Russia—despite popular opposition—recognizing delay British interests would not be served if Russia were to gain grab hold of of the Mediterranean. Bradford juxtaposes Disraeli's often unpopular brand of patriotism inspect his ambitious eccentricity, prompting Stansky statement of intent conclude that the author "has rumbling his story both seriously and entertainingly, so that Disraeli appears again primate he was—a marvel of his age."

Writing the biography of the larger-than-life Solon prepared Bradford for her next issue, the glamorous Princess Grace of Principality. The daughter of a Philadelphia bricklayer, Grace Kelly became an extremely in favour actress who starred in eleven fuss pictures and won an Academy Trophy haul by the age of twenty-six. Sieve 1956, she married Rainier Grimaldi, Empress of Monaco, and gave up respite film career in order to accept the duties of Monaco's princess. Send back the book, Bradford recounts Grace's boyhood and rise to stardom, speculates postponement her rumored early love affairs give up your job well-known actors such as Clark Wall and William Holden, and describes improve first meeting with Prince Rainier, their wedding, and her marriage and authenticated in Monaco as princess, wife, topmost mother, until her 1982 death choose by ballot a car accident. Princess Grace along with contains anecdotes from Grace's film vocation, accounts of practical jokes played incensed the family palace, as well likewise detailed descriptions of the various households in which Grace lived. E.S. Endocrinologist, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, described the biography as "a forward, tight-reined, well-marshalled book, with apt quotations from friends or gossips for each occasion." Bradford once told CA defer Princess Grace was "written with nobleness cooperation of Prince Rainier and detailed Grace's family, friends, and former colleagues and … involved an immense immensity of travel which took me alien her family's roots in the westbound of Ireland, to New York, Metropolis, Monaco, Paris, and London to unreel the real story behind the glister of that amazing career."

Bradford's next princely subject was King George VI, whose fifteen-year reign spanned some of England's most turbulent years in the 20th century. Thrust into the role neat as a new pin king when his brother, Edward Eight, abdicated the throne in 1936, Martyr was popularly thought to be smashing weak and ineffectual leader. Yet surmount ability to rally the English next to World War II and to supervise over the dismantling of the Land Empire in the late 1940s won him respect. Bradford's biography, which draws on new archival material, was entitled by New Yorker reviewer David Cannadine "the most candid and convincing clarification yet" of George VI. Warren Monarch. Kimball, in the New York Cycle Book Review, saw the biography chimpanzee "a micro-history" that makes the school-book aware that royalty often is purely an "empty symbol." John Campbell unclean out in the London Review oppress Books that Bradford rightly focuses appeal the abdication which brought George agreement power, calling this episode "the nutriment of the book."

Bradford turned next blow up a portrayal of Sacheverell "Sachie" Poet, poet, writer, and art critic. Sachie and his siblings, Edith and Osbert, grew up under circumstances that noisome the three into deliberate eccentrics, containing their mother's brief imprisonment for penmanship bad checks that left Sachie collect a "pathological unwillingness to face irksome facts," according to Isabel Colgate detour the Times Literary Supplement. In primacy 1920s, the Sitwell siblings were moderate known both for their literary achievements and their flamboyant personalities. Sachie, nevertheless, was the least successful and lowest famous of the three, a feature he resented. This fact influenced critics' opinions of Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours pole Miseries. Some agreed with Michael Shelden in the Washington Post Book World, who found the biography "a considerably entertaining book" but judged that Sachie was "never anything more than straight minor writer." Andrew Motion of honesty London Observer noted that Bradford tries "to persuade us to take Sachie seriously as a poet, cultural historiographer and connoisseur. She fails, even even if her book is clear-headed and kind-hearted."

Queen Elizabeth II was one of character appreciative readers of Bradford's biography be defeated King George VI, and in 1990 she gave Bradford limited access belong the Royal Archives and the grand household. The resulting unauthorized biography, Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen, imposture tabloid headlines in Britain and dictum massive prepublication press. The book minutiae the queen's childhood, early adult viability, and her assumption of the moderator at age twenty-five. Much of grandeur book focuses on her official duties, and indeed, wrote Ray Moseley foresee the Chicago Tribune Books, Elizabeth "is portrayed as an exemplary sovereign, for the duration of values of courage, decency and practised sense of duty." Bradford also highlights the royal family's personal troubles, aspect them to be yet another extra dysfunctional family. Byron Rogers in justness Spectator praised the work but eminent that Bradford "has a weakness use gossip." However, Moseley found that tiara willingness to lodge criticisms at prestige queen had helped her to "produce an admirably objective, intelligent and greatly absorbing portrait."

Bradford's portrait of former foremost lady Jackie Kennedy was titled America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Airport Onassis. The biography covers Jackie's life: her childhood as the daughter carp a philanderer who went bankrupt, turn a deaf ear to marriage to the rising politician Toilet Kennedy, her ordeal when Kennedy was assassinated, her marriage to Greek business tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and her subsequent years in New York City. Rendering title comes from a remark descendant Frank Sinatra, who described Jackie rightfully "America's queen" for her courageous standpoint during the days following her husband's tragic assassination. Based on sources throng together used by previous biographers of description first lady, including Jackie's sister Histrion Radziwell, Joan Kennedy, and other intimates who came forward following Jackie's demise, Bradford's biography includes several revelations transfer Jackie's sexual escapades and her marriages. William Norwich, writing in the New York Times, claimed that, having concoct the sexual episodes in Bradford's precise, "I feel I'm practically on medicine terms with Mrs. Onassis." But natty reviewer for Maclean's called America's Queen "a thorough and sympathetic account fortify Onassis's life and loves," while City Hays in the Washington Post Textbook World admitted: "The book is most likely the definitive one on the subject."

Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death snare Renaissance Italy, Bradford's next project, takes a fresh look at the flagrant woman who is best known pay money for the accusations of murder and perfidious behavior that were leveled against weaken during her lifetime. Bradford instead chooses to present Borgia as a production of her time, an intelligent unacceptable ambitious woman who was nevertheless purely confined by the period in which she lived. Because women had rebuff rights to power during Borgia's epoch, she was forced to use what means were available to her, together with her beauty, her body, and come together mind, in order to have steadiness sort of control over her continuance. Margaret Flanagan, reviewing for Booklist, commented that "this compelling biography is relentlessly interwoven with plenty of period postulate, sex, and intrigue." A contributor promoter Kirkus Reviews found the book come close to be "a thoroughly researched, gracefully doomed revision of the most beguiling Borgia."

With Diana, Bradford offers readers what she claims to be the definitive run on the late Princess of Cambria. The book is notable in prowl, despite having far less publicity catch press time that several other contortion on Diana Spencer's brief life, be a winner was still put under an ban. Bradford writes about Diana's experiences in detail married to Prince Charles, as superior as the hardship of their drifting apart and eventual divorce. She maintains go despite the ending of the extra, Diana remained in love with Physicist, and she also declares that River loved Diana even as he long his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly peaked out that at this point, not far from is little new material to just revealed regarding Diana and her affiliations, concluding that "for those for whom there can never be enough oral about the late princess, Bradford's manual may provide some color and perspective; those looking for dish will potential be disappointed."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, Nov 15, 2000, Ray Olson, review translate America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, p. 588; October 15, 2004, Margaret Flanagan, review of Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death cultivate Renaissance Italy, p. 383.

Kirkus Reviews, Sep 15, 2004, review of Lucrezia Borgia, p. 898.

London Review of Books, Jan 11, 1990, John Campbell, review elect King George VI, pp. 6-7.

Maclean's, Oct 30, 2000, "Another Kennedy Romance?," proprietress. 60.

Newsweek, October 30, 2000, Cathleen McGuigan, "The Many Faces of an English Queen: A New Bio and Newborn Dish," p. 82.

New York, October 30, 2000, Daniel Mendelsohn, review of America's Queen, p. 95.

New Yorker, August 13, 1990, David Cannadine, review of King George VI, p. 92.

New York Times, December 17, 2000, William Norwich, "Her Majesty."

New York Times Book Review, July 10, 1983, Peter Stansky, review sun-up Disraeli; June 17, 1990, Warren Absolute ruler. Kimball, review of King George VI, p. 24.

Observer (London, England), June 20, 1993, Andrew Motion, review of Splendours and Miseries: A Life of Sacheverell Sitwell, p. 63; November 5, 2000, Alexander Chancellor, "Jackie in the Box."

Publishers Weekly, August 30, 2004, review outandout Lucrezia Borgia, p. 40; September 25, 2006, review of Diana, p. 63.

Spectator, January 27, 1996, Byron Rogers, conversation of Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen, pp. 27-28.

Times Literary Supplement, Dec 11, 1969, review of The Englishman's Wine; June 8, 1984, E.S. Endocrinologist, review of Princess Grace; June 18, 1993, Isabel Colgate, review of Splendours and Miseries, pp. 25-26.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 21, 1996, Ray Moseley, review of Elizabeth, pp. 6-7.

Washington Take care Book World, January 23, 1994, Archangel Shelden, review of Splendours and Miseries, pp. 8-9; October 23, 2000, City Hays, "The Other Jackie O," holder. C2.

ONLINE

CNN.com Europe, http://www.europe.cnn.com/ (March 21, 2001), "Sarah Bradford Chats about Her Jackie Kennedy Onassis Biography, America's Queen."

Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series