Victoria Glendinning is a biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. Her biographies include A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter, Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Prize), Rebecca West, Anthony Trollope (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography), Jonathan Swift, Leonard Woolf and a biography of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. Her novels include The Grown-Ups, Electricity, Flight and The Butcher's Daughter. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a CBE in 1998.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction to the New EditionAcknowledgementsFamily Tree of Sackvilles and NicolsonsProloguePart I: Knole 1892–1913Part II: Change and Challenge 1913–21Part III: Explorations 1921–30Part IV: Sissinghurst 1930–45Part V: The Enclave and the Tower 1945–62Notes and Sources Books by V. Sackville-WestIndex

What each of us would look for in an ideal future biographer is what each of us looks for in an ideal doctor: sympathy, trustfulness and acute powers of diagnosis. All these three qualities are here present. Vita would undoubtedly have shared our approval and gratitude

Victoria Glendinning is a biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. Her biographies include A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter, Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Prize), Rebecca West, Anthony Trollope (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography), Jonathan Swift, Leonard Woolf and a biography of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. Her novels include The Grown-Ups, Electricity, Flight and The Butcher's Daughter. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a CBE in 1998.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction to the New EditionAcknowledgementsFamily Tree of Sackvilles and NicolsonsProloguePart I: Knole 1892–1913Part II: Change and Challenge 1913–21Part III: Explorations 1921–30Part IV: Sissinghurst 1930–45Part V: The Enclave and the Tower 1945–62Notes and Sources Books by V. Sackville-WestIndex

What each of us would look for in an ideal future biographer is what each of us looks for in an ideal doctor: sympathy, trustfulness and acute powers of diagnosis. All these three qualities are here present. Vita would undoubtedly have shared our approval and gratitude

Victoria Glendinning is a biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. Her biographies include A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter, Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Prize), Rebecca West, Anthony Trollope (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography), Jonathan Swift, Leonard Woolf and a biography of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. Her novels include The Grown-Ups, Electricity, Flight and The Butcher's Daughter. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a CBE in 1998.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction to the New EditionAcknowledgementsFamily Tree of Sackvilles and NicolsonsProloguePart I: Knole 1892–1913Part II: Change and Challenge 1913–21Part III: Explorations 1921–30Part IV: Sissinghurst 1930–45Part V: The Enclave and the Tower 1945–62Notes and Sources Books by V. Sackville-WestIndex

What each of us would look for in an ideal future biographer is what each of us looks for in an ideal doctor: sympathy, trustfulness and acute powers of diagnosis. All these three qualities are here present. Vita would undoubtedly have shared our approval and gratitude