As a writer and biographer Lord David Cecil combined scholarly accuracy with elegance of style, and his work achieved a wide popular appeal. He had an instinctive grasp of narrative technique and an urbane style. By avoiding the complex and the abstract, he always kept the work close to the story line and in touch with the personalities involved. Even if his studies were not original, they were always fresh and readable. His most popular book was A Portrait of Jane Austen, published in 1978, when he was seventy-six years old.

Edward Christian David Gascoyne Cecil was born on 9 April 1902 at Hatfield House, one of England's finest and most famous stately homes, into the Cecil family, one of England's best-known aristocratic families. The family's fortunes were founded by Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury, Elizabeth I's chief minister, who was one of the most remarkable personalities of his age...