G. B. Stern (1890-1973), born Gladys Bertha, grew up in Holland Park, and published her first novel, Pantomime, in 1914. She was close to the centre of literary London, and counted Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, Rebecca West and Noël Coward as friends. She wrote over forty novels, several plays, short stories, works of non-fiction and memoir over her long writing career, but it was the series of novels based on her own family, The Rakonitz Chronicles, the first of which is published as The Matriarch, that established her popular and critical success.