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Enid Bagnold

Enid Bagnold, author of The Squire

Enid Bagnold, born in Kent in 1889, lived in Jamaica where her father was CO, Royal Engineers, and attended the progressive Prior's Field in Surrey from 1902-6. A 'tomboyish, dramatic, outdoor, beautiful girl' (DNB), she spent some months in Lausanne and in Paris and lived in Chelsea learning to draw. She was a VAD during WWI and wrote A Diary without Dates and The Happy Foreigner about this. After her marriage to Sir Roderick Jones (MD of Reuter's 1916-41) she led a sociable life in Hyde Park Gate and Rottingdean, Sussex; four children were born - Laurian, Timothy, Richard and Dominick. More novels appeared, including National Velvet (1935, filmed 1944) and The Squire (The Door of Life in the US) in 1938: 'imagine To the Lighthouse written by Mrs Ramsay expecting her fifth child and you get something of the spirit' (Margaret Drabble). Later Enid Bagnold wrote plays, The Chalk Garden (1955) being the best-known. She died in 1981.

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