Honest, funny, unorthodox, liberated and quintessentially English, Dodie Smith, playwright and novelist, was the author of the immortal classics, The Hundred and One Dalmatians and I Capture the Castle. One of the most successful playwrights of her generation, she spent the war years in the U.S. where she befriended Christopher Isherwood, and through Walt Disney’s film, became a household name.

“Beautifully written, warm and lively, with enough detachment for us to see Dodie for ourselves… Full of life and zip.”

- Joanna Trollope

Valerie Grove is a journalist and interviewer with a weekly column in The Times. Her first book, Where I Was Young, was published in 1976, and her second, The Compleat Woman, in 1987.