The Cost of Living

Kathleen Farrell was born in 1912 into a well-off London family. During the Second World War she served as assistant to the secretary-general of the Labour Party, and after the war’s end, she founded a literary agency. In 1942 she wrote a ghost story with autobiographical elements, but it was in the 1950s that she embarked on a series of novels entertainingly skewering contemporary life and mores. Physically tiny, Farrell nevertheless was determined and outgoing, having a wide circle of literary friends, acquaintances and even one enemy (she belonged to ‘The Lady Novelists' Anti-Elizabeth League’, whose members were united in their disdain for fellow novelist Elizabeth Taylor). She died in 1999.