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Who is Barbara Cartland? A quick Google search turns up the obvious result: Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland (later honored as Dame Cartland) was one of the most prolific romance novel writers in history, with more than 700 published books. As noted by the New York Times, she regularly churned out 23 novels every year. No surprise, then, that she appeared more than once in the Guiness Book of Records as the world’s best-selling author, and her works have been translated into 36 languages.
If that were the whole story, it would certainly be enough for literary enthusiasts and those curious about the sheer speed of potential prose production. But there’s another side to Dame Cartland: She was a daredevil who pushed the high-society fad of glider planes to their limits — and shares at least some credit for the Allied victory on D-Day.
Born in July 1901 to Mary Hamilton Scobell and her husband Major Bertram “Bertie” Cartland of the British Army, Barbara Cartland began her life firmly in middle-class comfort. The death of her grandfather and father in short order, however, forced her mother to find a new home for the family and open her own business — a London dress shop — to cover expenses. Cartland’s two younger brothers were killed in battle in 1940, while she gained success first as a society reporter and then as a romance novelist. Her work followed a consistent theme: innocent young virgins meeting handsome and entirely honorable men, getting married and enjoying chaste romantic encounters — Cartland herself was said to dislike physical contact and eschewed common vices such as smoking and drinking.
