Vita Sackville West

She married the diplomat Harold Nicholson in 1913 and they moved to Cospoli, Constantinople. They returned to England in 1914 and bought Long Barn, in Kent, and employed their friend the architect Edwin Lutyens to help design a small parterre. They bought Sissinghurst Castle in 1930 in a practically derelict state and set about rebuilding and designing the house and gardens.

Although they remained good friends, Harold was a homosexual and Vita had numerous lesbian affairs, the most notable being with Virginia Wolf.

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).

In 1946 Vita was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The following year she began a weekly column in the Observer called In your Garden. In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust's garden committee. She died of cancer on 2 June 1962. Harold died six years later.

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.

... LISTEN to a clip from In your Garden read by Janet McTeer (who notably played Vita In BBC2's A Portrait of a Marriage)

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