photo: Susan Greenhill

Victoria Glendinning is a free-lance writer, well-known for her successful biographies and novels. She also writes reviews and articles, and does broadcasts and talks on all kinds of subjects.

Her biographies include A SUPPRESSED CRY: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter; ELIZABETH BOWEN: Portrait of a Writer; VITA: the Life of V.Sackville-West (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography); EDITH SITWELL: A Unicorn Among Lions (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Prize); REBECCA WESTt; ANTHONY TROLLOPE (another Whitbread Prize for Biography), JONATHAN SWIFT and most recently LEONARD WOOLF.

Her novels include THE GROWN-UPS, ELECTRICITY and FLIGHT.

Victoria has been President of English PEN and a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature, and although she has never had an academic post she has four honorary doctorates.

Work apart, she leads an exciting life, travelling widely with her husband Kevin O’Sullivan. They live in Somerset. Her enthusiasms include walking and gardening, and spending time with her four sons and seven grandchildren.

Many people today know Leonard Woolf mainly through the surname of his wife, Virginia, or his role in supporting her through her mental illness, depicted in films like "The Hours". Some critics see him as his wife's oppressor.

In Victoria Glendinning's biography, for the first time we see the whole man. As well as being a prominent member of the Bloomsbury group, Leonard was a formidable figure in his own right, first as an innovative civil administrator in Ceylon, then as a writer, leading light of the Fabian society and publisher of TS Eliot, EM Forster, Robert Graves, Katherine Mansfield and of course Virginia Woolf. He was interested in everything and knew everybody.

The achievement of Glendinning's book is to make its readers wish that they knew him too.