Rose Macaulay

Born in Rugby, Warwickshire, on August 1, 1881, Rose Macaulay grew up in an intellectually rich family and spent part of her early life in Italy. She later studied at Somerville College, Oxford, and went on to build a remarkably varied literary career that included novels, essays, criticism, biography, and travel books.

Macaulay became admired for writing that was clever, funny, and often sharply observant about English society. Across decades of work, she published many books, but she is especially remembered for The Towers of Trebizond (1956), a novel blending comedy, travel, and spiritual questioning, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1958, the year she died in London. Today she is still valued for the range of her work and for a voice that could be both playful and deeply thoughtful.