Lillian Hellman

As "The Children's Hour" opens in London, the Guardian presents the author. 'Hellman unquestionably engaged in mythmaking, misrepresentation and exaggeration: but she also admitted as much, albeit obliquely, in the opening of An Unfinished Woman: "What I have written is the truth as I saw it, but the truth as I saw it, of course, doesn't have much to do with the truth. It's as if I have fitted parts of a picture puzzle and then a child overturned it and threw out some pieces." ' More...