Enid Algerine Bagnold, Lady Jones, CBE, was a British author and playwright best known for her 1935 story National Velvet. Enid Algerine Bagnold was born on October 27, 1889, in Rochester, Kent, the daughter of Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold and his wife, Ethel, and raised primarily in Jamaica. Her younger brother was named Ralph Bagnold. She went to art school in London before working as an assistant editor for one of Frank Harris' journals, who later became her girlfriend. Hugh Kingsmill's work The Will to Love (1919) portrays both Harris and Bagnold. Bagnold studied art in Chelsea, where he painted with Walter Sickert and had his sculptures created by Gaudier Brzeska. On July 8, 1920, she married Sir Roderick Jones, the chairman of Reuters, but continued to write under her maiden name. They lived in North End House, Rottingdean, near Brighton (formerly Sir Edward Burne-Jones' residence), and led a spectacular social life. The grounds at North End House inspired her play The Chalk grounds. The Joneses lived at No. 29 Hyde Park Gate in London from 1928 until 1969, seven years after Sir Roderick's death, which means they were Winston Churchill and Jacob Epstein's neighbours for many of those years.
