Jane Wellesley (13:30 BST)

The epithet ‘blue eyes and wild spirit’ captures the fascination of Dorothy Wellesley – poet, traveller, heiress and rebel. When she became the lover of fellow-poet and gardener, Vita Sackville-West, she wrecked her marriage to the future duke of Wellington but gained entrée to the circle of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group of writers and artists. A significant poet in her own right, she was hailed by none other than W.B.Yeats as one of the most important of her generation. She in turn became his intimate friend and muse in his final years, being present at his death bed.

This riveting and unflinching biography by her granddaughter, drawing on unpublished archives and private family papers, reveals a reckless and often vulnerable woman of great talent, passions and integrity who deserves this long overdue recognition as being a ground breaker ahead of her times.

In conversation with James Knox

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