Caroline Blackwood (1931-1996) was born into a rich Anglo-Irish aristocratic family. She rebelled against her background at an early age and led a hectic and bohemian life, which included marriages to the painter Lucian Freud, the pianist and composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as 'a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers'. In the 1970s Blackwood began to write. Her novel Great Granny Webster was shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize.