Enid Bagnold

Enid Algerine Bagnold, Lady Jones CBE (27 October 1889 – 31 March 1981) was a British author and playwright, known for the 1935 story National Velvet.

She was born in Rochester, Kent. daughter of Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold and his wife, Ethel (née Alger), and brought up mostly in Jamaica. She went to art school in London, and then worked for Frank Harris, who became her lover.

During the First World War she became a nurse, writing critically of the hospital administration and being dismissed as a result. After that she was a driver in France for the remainder of the war years. She wrote about her hospital experiences in A Diary Without Dates, and about her experiences as a driver in The Happy Foreigner.

In 1920, she married Sir Roderick Jones, Chairman of Reuters, but continued to use her maiden name for her writing. They lived at North End House, Rottingdean, near Brighton (previously the home of Sir Edward Burne-Jones), the garden of which inspired her play, The Chalk Garden.

The couple had four children. Their great-granddaughter is Samantha Cameron, wife of the former Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

Bagnold died at Rottingdean in 1981, aged 92, and is interred at St Margaret's churchyard there.

During the Second World War, Bagnold's brother Ralph Bagnold founded the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a precursor of the SAS.

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