'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

The expression 'femme fatale' could have been coined for Barbara Skelton. She had many admirers – Peter Quennell, Feliks Topolski, Cyril Connolly, King Farouk, George Weidenfeld, Derek Jackson, the list is not exhaustive – some of whom she married. Tears Before Bedtime and

Weep No More were first published separately in 1987 and 1989; they then appeared in one paperback volume in 1993. It is in this form they are being reissued in Faber Finds

.

As Jeremy Lewis, her literary executor, puts it these memoirs 'combine waspishness and wit in equal measure. She had a keen eye for the absurd, and a ruthless ability to skewer friends and foes alike with an exact and colourful turn of phrase …'

'Uniquely savage memoirs of rackety highbrow life … One feels Balzac is the novelist who would best do justice to all this in fictional form.' Anthony Powell

'Provides some of the funniest reading I can remember.' Auberon Waugh,

Independent

'The two volumes together make a memorable portrait. She deserves to have her likeness preserved and by a writer as good as herself.' Frank Kermode,

Guardian