Fun Facts Friday: Enid Bangold

Enid Bangold (27 October, 1889 – 31 March, 1981) was a British writer, feminist, and autobiographer. She is known for her story National Velvet.

Books by Enid Bangold*

Fun Facts about Enid Bangold:

Enid Bangold was born in Rochester, Kent. Her father was a colonel in the military and the family lived in Jamaica when she was a young girl.
In Jamaica it was when the future author learned to ride horse, which inspired her famous novel.
Once the family got back on England, she went to a progressive school which was run by the mother of Aldous Huxley.
When she was 22, Ms. Bangold met her first lover in a bookshop off Charing Cross Road. Frank Harris, age 56, was also an editor which gave her a job as his assistant, but also a conman and self-proclaimed Casanova.
She served as a nurse in World War I, and was critical of the hospital administration, which was her first brush with fame. Two of her early books, A Diary Without Dates (1917), and The Happy Foreigner (1920) described her war experiences.
After moving up in society, and exchanging lovers appropriately, she married Sir Roderick Jones, the wealthy chairman of Reuters. The couple enjoyed a very active and dazzling social life.
The Joneses had four children. Laurian, the eldest illustrated National Velvet when he was 14 years old. Samantha Cameron, the wife of British Prime Minister David Cameron, is their great-granddaughter.
Her play The Chalk Garden, was her most enduring hit. The play about the tense relationship between servants and masters, featured strong women characters and was a success in the United States and in England.
During the first reading of The Chalk Garden, the actresses referred to her as Enid, then Miss Bangold, and by the end as Lady Jones. She realized the actresses thought she was some rich lady who got her play produced, and the titles were said in contempt. Everything, however, went off well and the play was very successful.
Enid Bangold’s biographer exposed some of the aspects of her life that she kept hidden in her biography. Such as her Nazi sympathies before war broke out, morphine addiction, literary feuds, motherhood, and more.