Mary Wesley published her first novel at seventy and went on to write a further nine bestsellers, including the legendary The Camomile Lawn, in a style best described as arsenic without the old lace. Many of her stories were inspired by her experiences during the Blitz, and by her marriages: the first to an aristocrat, a brief and conventional affair, and the second to a penniless writer she adored.

A remarkable book about a remarkable woman, Patrick Marnham's brilliantly researched and wonderfully impartial book disentangles truth from rumour, highlighting the links between Wesley's real life and her fiction.