Enid Algerine Bagnold, Lady Jones, CBE (27 October 1889 – 31 March 1981), known by her maiden name as Enid Bagnold, was a British author and playwright, best known for the 1935 story National Velvet which was filmed in 1944 with Elizabeth Taylor.
She was born in Rochester, Kent, daughter of Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold and his wife Ethel Alger, and brought up mostly in Jamaica. She went to art school at the school of Walter Sickert in London, and then worked for Frank Harris, who was also her first lover.
She was a nurse during World War I, writing critically of the hospital administration and being dismissed as a result. She was a driver in France for the remainder of the war years. She wrote of her hospital experiences in A Diary Without Dates and her driving experiences in The Happy Foreigner.
Her brother Ralph Bagnold founded the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) during World War II, a precursor of the SAS.
In 1920, she married Sir Roderick Jones (Chairman of Reuters) but continued to use her maiden name for her writing. They lived at North End House in Rottingdean, near Brighton, Sussex, (previously the home of Sir Edward Burne-Jones), the garden of which inspired her play The Chalk Garden. They had four children. Their great-granddaughter is Samantha Cameron, wife of the United Kingdom's current Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron.
Lady Jones died at Rottingdean in 1981 and is buried in St Margaret's churchyard.
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Famous quotes by enid bagnold:
“In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again.... We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)
“The pleasure of one’s effect on other people still exists in age—what’s called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)
“When a man goes through six years’ training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)
“A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)