Caroline Blackwood was a journalist and novelist. She was born into the Guinness family in 1931 and was on intimate terms with some of the most celebrated artists of her time. Her first husband was the painter Lucian Freud, her second the composer Israel Citkowitz, and her third the poet Robert Lowell. Caroline's marriage to Lucian Freud caused a great stir in English society; Evelyn Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford, 'You know that poor Maureen's daughter made a runaway match with a terrible Yid?' Caroline and Lucian became part of an artistic and literary group that included Francis Bacon and Cyril Connolly but eventually Freud's drinking and gambling became too much and she left him. Her most trying times, however, were during her seven-year marriage to Lowell who suffered from paranoia and acute depression. Lowell died from a heart-attack having fled from their house in Ireland, clutching a portrait of her painted by Freud.Caroline published her first novel at the age of thirty-eight: The Stepdaughter, a study of female rage. Her gifts lay in satirising human behaviour.
Dangerous Muse : A Life of Caroline Blackwood