'Challenge' was written in 1920, but at the last moment it was withdrawn from publication because of the scandal it would have caused. It was inspired by Vita's relationship with Violet Trefusis.

A year after Vita Sackville-West first travelled to Iran - a journey described in the classic Passenger to Teheran - she returned to the land that had so captured her imagination. For twelve days, with her husband and three friends, she embarked on a difficult and often dangerous journey through the rugged and wildly-beautiful Bakhtiari Mountains of south-western Iran. It was a landscape that affected Sackville-West profoundly, inspiring what is arguably some of her most lyrical prose; in the same year she wrote her acclaimed poem, The Land. Interwoven with her magical...

A glittering portrait of fashionable Edwardian English high society seen through the lives of a brother and sister torn by ties to the past and the lure of the modern era.
Sebastian is the heir of Chevron, a vast and beautiful English country estate. As such he is a fixed part of an eternal round of lavish parties, intrigues, traditions and fashions at the cold, decadent heart of Edwardian high society. Everyone knows the role Sebastian must play, but Sebastian isn't sure he wants the part. His sister Viola, meanwhile, scorns every part of her inheritance and is searching for a way...

When the great statesman Lord Slane dies, everyone assumes his dutiful wife will slowly fade away, the paying guest of each of her six children. But Lady Slane surprises everyone by escaping to a rented house in Hampstead where she revels in her new freedom, revives youthful ambitions and gathers some very unsuitable companions.