Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence

Elizabeth Jane Howard wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress; but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Artemis Cooper’s biography explores a woman trying to make sense of her life through her writing, as well as illuminating the literary world in which she lived.

Artemis Cooper is the author of a number of books including Cairo in the War, 1939-1945, Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David and, most recently, Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure. With her husband, Antony Beevor, she wrote Paris After the Liberation, 1945-1949. She has edited two collections of letters as well as Words of Mercury, an anthology of the work of Patrick Leigh Fermor; and, with Colin Thubron, she edited The Broken Road, the final volume of Leigh Fermor’s European trilogy.