Matthew Sweet

So today, we are immersing ourselves in the life of this genuinely baffling woman.

We're looking at Matthew Sweet's new biography.

It's called The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland, which literally just came out yesterday, September 10th, 2026.

Brand new.

Yeah, just the crazy lady in pink.

Exactly.

But Matthew Sweet's biography makes a really compelling case that Barbara Cartland was essentially engineering the influencer mindset decades before the concept of social media even existed.

Oh, wow.

... shortly.

And now there's a brilliant new book, meticulously researched, and I found towards the end surprisingly moving biography, The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet, who we are lucky enough to be joined by today, our first Poshcast guest.

Welcome to Camfield.

Hiya.

[laughs] Thank you very, very much, Matthew.

We are so enjoying

We should first say, actually, for the viewers of this, we are, Cleo and I are sitting on the sofa.

The sofa

[laughs] And they were calling it a hoax as well, and actually, there was a really serious point to be made within this.

So for instance, Matthew Sweet said, "Gosh, there seems to be footage of a Cambridge professor", that's James Orr, "plotting to break the law on Channel 4 News." Now, this, of course, is pertinent because as Tanita Tikaram said, "Strangely, the BBC hasn't made this item about a white Cambridge academic breaking news-

Mm

... unlike Professor Jason Arday's resignation, which they considered of national importance.

We've got three terrific... writers here today with three new books.

The first is Matthew Sweet.

Many of you will have heard him on Radio 3 as the presenter of The Sound of Cinema.

His books include Inventing the Victorians, and his latest book is about Barbara Cartland, who older readers will remember was our agony aunt to begin with under Richard Ingalls.

I think he's going to explain why that The relationship came to an end, but ladies and gentlemen, here is Matthew Sweet on his new book, The Great Dictator, A Life of Barbara Card.

Yes, I feel she's being brought home, Barbara.

I don't know if any of you were ever in a room with her or an oldie lunch with her, but really I think she's core oldie material, really.

Also available, the Sixth Doctor Adventures featuring Peri and Turlough.

Colin Baker once again stars as the Doctor alongside Nicola Bryant and Mark Strickson in an adventure entitled Save the Day by Matthew Sweet and directed by Sam Clemens.

Good morning, madam.

I'm, um, looking for love.

Go, Jack.

I'm Jack Rayner, and I was the producer of Save the Date.

It's a Matthew Sweet script, which means it's going to be funny, it's going to be clever, ridiculously erudite, have loads of wonderful historical details, um, scattered within it, and just be an absolute joy to listen to.

Thing about Matthew's work is his plots are always brilliant and fun and come from a direction that nobody else would ever come from.

I realized for many years, every interview I gave, I would say, "One day there'll be a detective series where the character is incidentally gay, and that, that would mean we've made proper progress."

Bookish was co-written with Matthew Sweet.

He's a broadcaster, an expert in Victorian popular culture, and author of Shepherd and Babylon, a best-selling book about the darker sides of British cinema.

They'd been friends a long time when a couple of years ago, Mark asked Matthew to work with him on his new idea.

It's not just the in-jokes and mutual interests, but the seamless, comical ease in each other's company.

We met at the publicity junket for Doctor Who in Cardiff.

And I said, "Are you the Matthew Sweet?" Because I'd read Inventing the Vic-Victorians, and I gave you an obituary for a Victorian adventurer called Captain Thunder.

[laughs]