A writer's struggles …

… on Sybille Bedford: A Life by Selina Hastings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Bedford could easily have become a byword for wasted potential. Her life, as Hastings tells it, was a conflict between the taste for pleasure and the ambition to write. Ultimately she synthesized them, living high, partying hard, loving often, and also writing several of the 20th century’s great novels — such as A Legacy and Jigsaw — as well as some remarkable travel writing and legal reportage. But it wasn’t easy.