Kathleen FarrellKathleen Farrell was born in London in 1912 and educated at a convent school. Her first book, Johnny's Not Home from the Fair (1942), was written while working for the wartime secretary-general of the Labour party, after which she foundd a prestigious literary agency, eventually sold to a rival firm. Farrell lived in Hampstead for twenty years with her partner Kay Dick - reviewer, editor and author of They (1977) - in a literary circle including Ivy Compton-Burnett, Stevie Smith and Olivia Manning. She wrote stories as well as five more novels - Mistletoe Malice (1951), Take It to Heart (1953), The Cost of Living (1956), The Common Touch (1958), and Limitations of Love (1962). Farrell's fiction was critically acclaimed for its savage wit and unsentimental humour, compared to Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Bowen, but failed to find a popular audience, and - by the time of her death in Hove in 1999 - she had fallen into obscurity. Read More Read Less