Vita Sackville-West, the daughter of the 3rd Baron Sackville, was born in Knole House, Kent in 1892. In 1913 she married the diplomat and journalist Harold Nicholson.

Sackville-West's first published works were a collection of poems, Powers of West and East (1917). Her long poem The Land won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She also wrote the novel Heritage (1919) and a history of her family, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922).

In the 1920s Sackville-West became romantically involved with the writer, Virginia Woolf, who celebrated this love affair in her novel Orlando (1928). Dedicated to Sackville-West, the book traces the history of the youthful, beautiful, and aristocratic Orlando, and explores the themes of sexual ambiguity. This was followed by the novels, The Edwardians (1930), All Passion Spent (1931) and The Dark Island (1934).

Sackville-West also published books on travel and literary topics and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. Her unorthodox marriage was described by her son, Nigel Nicholson, in Portrait of a Marriage. Vita Sackville-West died in 1962.

Vita Sackville-West is available from Amazon

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