Enid Bagnold

Enid Bagnold (1889-1981) the daughter of an army officer father, Bagnold was born in Kent but spent part of her childhood in Jamaica. She grew up in an artistic upper-class environment and later studied art at the Walter Sickert School of Art. She worked as a nurse in World War I but was highly critical of the hospital administration and wrote about it in Diary Without Dates (1917). She married Sir Roderick Jones, the Head of Reuters News Agency in 1920, moved to Rottingdean in Kent and had four children. Bagnold’s biggest theatrical success was her adaptation of her novel National Velvet, later filmed with Elizabeth Taylor. Besides The Chalk Garden, eight of her plays were performed including: Lottie Dundass (1942); Poor Judas (1951); Gertie (or Little Idiot, 1952); The Last Joke (1960); The Chinese Prime Minister (1964); Call Me Jacky (1967) and A Matter of Gravity (1978). She also wrote poetry and a number of novels including The Difficulty of Getting Married (1924) and notably The Squire (1938). Her great grand-daughter, Samantha Cameron, is married to the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron.