Matthew Sweet's Cartland biography opens sealed archives of a 750-million-copy author

Hodder & Stoughton publishes Matthew Sweet's 'The Great Dictator' (496 pp, ISBN 9781399715799), the first biography built on what The Bookseller called "unprecedented access" to Barbara Cartland's personal archives. Cartland wrote 723 novels entirely by dictation, selling an estimated 750 million copies — outsold only by Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare. The Guardian reviewed it on 25 August 2026.