Her life and work are fascinating because there were contradictions in her politics, in her sexuality, in everything she did and everything she was; in old age she spoke of the “distressing multiplicity” of the human personality. She was a rebel whose instincts were profoundly conservative, a proud outcast who loved the status quo. … It is her vices, as much as her virtues, that make her letters so compelling.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 529