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Books

Lillian Hellman lied her way through life

A review of Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life, by Dorothy Gallagher. This disloyal Stalinist has not been blessed with a biographer who likes her

5 July 2014

9:00 AM

5 July 2014

9:00 AM

Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life Dorothy Gallagher

Yale, pp.143, £18.99, ISBN: 9780300164978

Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the”’ wasn’t far off. Navigating through the hall of mirrors that Hellman left behind, trying to sort fact from self-aggrandising fiction, seems to have worked Dorothy Gallagher into a fury.

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