Selina Hastings (writer)
Lady Selina Shirley Hastings is a British journalist, author and biographer.
The elder daughter of Francis, 16th Earl of Huntingdon, by his second marriage to Margaret Lane, Hastings was educated at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, where she took an MA degree.
Hastings has written books including Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, Nancy Mitford, The Singing Ringing Tree, The Man Who Wanted to Live Forever, The Firebird, Evelyn Waugh, Beibl Lliw Y Plant, Rosamond Lehmann and The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham. She is a past recipient of the Marsh Biography Award.
Several of Hastings' works have received critical attention. Reviewing Nancy Mitford for The New York Times, William McBrien questioned Hastings' sparse documentation of some of the facts in the book. He praised the book for its depiction of that historical period. Evelyn Waugh was reviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and The Spectator. Rosamond Lehmann was reviewed in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham was reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
Hastings was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1994. Among others she and her sister, Lady Harriet Shackleton, are in remainder to several ancient English baronies, including those of Hastings and Botreaux.
