Great Granny Webster

Synopsis

Great Granny Webster, as she sat silent and impassive in her straight-backed hard Victorian gothic chair, was the embodiment of everything that was ‘correct’ in the traditions of her aristocratic family. But the insidious effect of this terrible old woman upon her daughter - immured in a decaying palatial Anglo-Irish house-her grandchildren in the frivolous world of the twenties, and the shy young girl who came to stay with her after the war in Hove, was far-reaching.

Author Biography

Caroline Blackwood was born in Knightsbridge, London, in July 1931.  Her hectic and bohemian life, partly a rebellion against her aristocratic family, included marriages to the painter Lucian Freud, the pianist and composer Israel Citkowitz and the poet Robert Lowell.  She began to write in the 1970s and her first novel was For All That I Found There.  Her other works included Great Granny Webster which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and The Last of the Duchess. Caroline Blackwood died in February 1996 aged 64.