Novelist, essayist, and poet, born in Rugby, Warwickshire, C England, UK. She read history at Oxford, where she wrote her first book. She won a considerable reputation as a social satirist, with such novels as Dangerous Ages (1921). Her best-known novel is The Towers of Trebizond (1956). Two postumous volumes, Letters to a Friend (1961--2), describe her return to the Anglican faith. She was made a dame in 1958