Enid Bagnold

Early life

She was born in Rochester, Kent. daughter of Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold and his wife, Ethel (née Alger), and brought up mostly in Jamaica. She went to art school in London, and then worked for Frank Harris, who became her lover.

Career

During the First World War she became a nurse, writing critically of the hospital administration and being dismissed as a result. After that she was a driver in France for the remainder of the war years. She wrote about her hospital experiences in A Diary Without Dates, and about her experiences as a driver in The Happy Foreigner.

In 1920, she married Sir Roderick Jones, Chairman of Reuters, but continued to use her maiden name for her writing. They lived at North End House, Rottingdean, near Brighton (previously the home of Sir Edward Burne-Jones), the garden of which inspired her play, The Chalk Garden.

The couple had four children. Their great-granddaughter is Samantha Cameron, wife of the former Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

Death

Bagnold died at Rottingdean in 1981, aged 92, and is interred at St Margaret's churchyard there.

Works

Part of the former home of Enid Bagnold in Rottingdean

• A Diary Without Dates (1917)
• The Sailing Ships and other poems (1918)
• The Happy Foreigner (1920)
• Serena Blandish or the Difficulty of Getting Married (1924)
• Alice & Thomas & Jane (1930)
• National Velvet (1935)
• The Door of Life (1938)
• The Squire (1938), republished in 2013 by Persephone Books
• Lottie Dundass (1943 play)
• Two Plays (1944)
• The Loved and Envied (1951)
• Theatre (1951)
• The Girl's Journey (1954)
• The Chalk Garden (1955 play)
• The Chinese Prime Minister (1964 play)
• A Matter of Gravity (original title Call Me Jacky; 1967 play)
• Autobiography (1969)
• Four Plays (1970)
• Poems (1978)
• Letters to Frank Harris & Other Friends (1980)
• Early Poems (1987)