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Elizabeth Smart : a fugue essay on women and creativity

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Elizabeth Smart

Article by Alice Van Wart

Updated by Andrew McIntosh

Published Online April 10, 2008

Last Edited December 6, 2021

Elizabeth Smart, writer (born 27 December 1913 in Ottawa, ON; died 4 March 1986 in London, England). In 1945, a slim work with a long title — By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept — was published in England by Elizabeth Smart, an unknown Canadian writer living in London. The book was based on Smart’s love affair with the poet George Barker, and Smart’s mother used her influence with Prime Minister Mackenzie King to have the book banned from Canada. However, it was hailed as a masterpiece of poetic prose when it was later republished in paperback. In 2021, Marie Frankland’s French translation of Smart’s The Collected Poems won a Governor General’s Literary Award .  

Early Life and Education

Elizabeth Smart was born into a prominent Ottawa family. She was educated at Hatfield Hall, a private school in Cobourg , Ontario . Although Smart was never without a notebook and thought of being a writer at a young age, piano study took her to London at the age of 19. Soon realizing that she would never be satisfied by the piano alone, and wanting to write seriously, she gave up the piano and returned to Canada. She worked for the Ottawa Journal writing society news.

Following this brief stint, Smart travelled extensively through the 1930s, living a peripatetic and at times bohemian life. During this time, she became acquainted with the poems of George Barker and sight unseen decided she would marry him. Eventually, through her contact with Lawrence Durrell, she met Barker. Though she never married him (he was married and Catholic ), she did have four of Barker’s children.

During the Second World War , Smart worked briefly at the British Embassy in Washington until it was obvious that she was pregnant with her second child. She then moved back to England, where she worked to support herself and her family. For the next two decades she wrote advertising copy, worked for Queen as literary editor and for Tatler and House and Garden magazines .

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945)

In 1945, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept was published . Based on the tempestuous nature of Smart and Barker’s relationship, it is seen as an homage to love that is unique in its voice and sensibility. It was published in a run of 2,000 copies, six of which found their way into a Canadian bookstore.  It soon established a cult following and was republished in 1966 and 1977. The first Canadian edition was issued in hardcover in 1982.

In 1977, two new works appeared: A Bonus, a short collection of poems; and The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals , a prose poem that offers a continuation and comment on her earlier work.

Later Life and Career

Smart returned briefly to Canada in 1982 as the writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta . That same year, the first Canadian hardcover edition of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept appeared, further establishing its literary importance and bringing Elizabeth Smart into literary prominence.

In 1984, In the Meantime , a new collection of previously unpublished poetry and prose appeared. Shortly following her death in 1986, Necessary Secrets , an edited collection of her early journals was published. Necessary Secrets further enhanced Smart’s literary reputation. Its importance to her work is invaluable. From it emerges a remarkable personality, one that is enigmatic, passionate, vibrant, extravagant and sensitive, yet subject to lethargy and self-doubt. She met and knew many of the people who would play important roles in Canada’s cultural and literary life. More importantly, the journals reveal the evolution of the style that is unique to By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

For Smart, life and art were inextricably connected. A second volume of her journals, On the Side of the Angels , was published in 1994. Opening in the 1940s, these journals chart Smart’s life through the 1950s and 1960s as she worked and brought up four children while mixing with London’s bohemians. The later journals show a woman coming to terms with her life and her writing. Her final years were spent writing and gardening at her country home in The Dell in Suffolk.

In 2021, Marie Frankland won a Governor General’s Literary Award for Poèmes 1938–1984 , her translation of Smart’s The Collected Poems .

See also Poetry in English ; Poetry in French .

Selected Works of Elizabeth Smart

• Governor General's Award

External Links

ELIZABETH SMART'S NOVEL-JOURNAL An insightful essay about Elizabeth Smart’s journals and what they reveal about the evolution of her writing style and the ideas that permeated her published works. From Studies in Canadian Literature.

Author Elizabeth Smart interviewed on Morningside Listen to Elizabeth Smart’s 1982 CBC Radio interview in which she reads from her novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and discusses her role as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. From CBC Digital Archives.

The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker A synopsis of Christopher Barker’s biography of his parents, writer Elizabeth Smart and poet George Barker. From Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Writing A Life An essay by Rosemary Sullivan about the challenge of writing an unbiased biography of author Elizabeth Smart ( By Heart: Elizabeth Smart, A Life ). From Books in Canada.

BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT: THE NOVEL AS A POEM A detailed analysis of the major themes and imagery that Elizabeth Smart created in her majestic prose-poem By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept . From Studies in Canadian Literature.

SMART, Elizabeth (1913-1986) A biography and bibliography for enigmatic Canadian author Elizabeth Smart. From abcbookworld.com.

Elizabeth Smart: Cultural Context See a profile of author Elizabeth Smart as well as digitized copies of selected manuscripts and notes. From Library and Archives Canada.

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Elizabeth Smart Describes Ordeal Of Rape, Abuse

Howard Berkes

Elizabeth Smart (right) walks out of the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City with her mother, Lois Smart, after testifying Thursday at a competency hearing for her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell. Colin Braley/AP hide caption

Elizabeth Smart, the Utah girl who was kidnapped and held captive seven years ago, told a federal court Thursday that she was raped repeatedly on a daily basis by her alleged abductor. It was the first time she has spoken publicly about her ordeal.

Over an hour and 40 minutes of testimony in a Salt Lake City courtroom, Smart described her nine months in captivity in painful detail. The testimony is part of an ongoing competency hearing for Brian David Mitchell, the man accused of abducting Smart and holding her as a polygamous wife.

A 'Wicked, Manipulative' Abductor

In the courtroom, Smart stepped up to the witness stand. She was smiling, smartly dressed and composed. It was precisely 2,659 days and seven hours after the man she identified as Brian David Mitchell took her at knife point from her Salt Lake City bedroom.

Elizabeth was 14 at the time; she is 21 now. She had told the complete story of her captivity to lawyers and therapists in private, but not in a courtroom, not publicly and not even to her own family.

Her father, mother, grandmother, siblings, uncles and other relatives watched from the first row of seats. Mitchell had been kicked out of the courtroom before Smart arrived because he wouldn't stop his incessant singing of hymns. He watched and listened from a holding cell as Smart described him as evil, wicked, manipulative, stinky, slimy, selfish, not spiritual, not religious and not close to God.

Prosecutors used Smart's testimony to underscore their central point: Mitchell, they insist, is faking mental illness so he won't have to go trial. For 100 minutes, Smart described Mitchell as a sex-crazed hypocrite who used religion to get sex, food, drugs and alcohol. She maintained her composure when describing her first rape shortly after her abduction. She said Mitchell raped her three to four times a day during her nine months as his captive.

'The Lord Wants You To Experience This'

Smart said Mitchell's manner was extremely crude. She quoted him telling her he was going to "F- - - her eyes out."

If she showed resistance or hesitation, she said, he told her, 'The Lord wants you to experience this.' He said the same thing to his wife, Wanda Barzee, who was angered by all the sex with Smart. Barzee has also been charged.

Mitchell bragged about manipulating people, Smart testified. " 'They think they're so smart,' " she quoted him as saying. " 'They don't know who they're dealing with.' " Smart said she was told she'd be killed if she tried to escape or yell out or not do what Mitchell wanted.

Federal defender Bob Steele tried to elicit testimony showing that Mitchell is too unstable to assist in his own defense. In response to Steele's questions, Smart said Mitchell claimed to be a prophet and God's voice on Earth. She said he also said he would reign over the children of God until Christ's return and then become Christ's mouthpiece.

When the lawyers were finished, Smart left the courtroom arm in arm with her mother and did not speak to reporters outside.

Smart's uncle, Tom Smart, praised her. "Elizabeth's been ready to move on for a long time," he says. "We're just very, very proud of her. She did a great job."

Competency Complications

U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman says Smart's testimony was "graceful and remarkable, strong."

"We said all along that one of the most important things in this case would be those that spent time with the defendant, as the psychologists have not been able to conduct psychological testing, standard psychological testing," he says. "Those witnesses that have spent time with him and have observed him are the most important. And none are more important than Elizabeth."

Mitchell was ruled incompetent twice before in state courts, which stalled his state prosecution. Smart was not called to testify in any of those proceedings. A federal indictment followed, and now federal prosecutors are going through the mental competency process.

Defense lawyer Steele says he has tried to engage Mitchell in his own defense. "I don't believe he can rationally assist me in presenting his case," he says. Steele also says he doesn't believe evidence of manipulation disproves mental illness.

"Do we imagine that the mentally ill aren't manipulative, that they only have nice traits?" He says. "Those things can exist side by side — manipulativeness and mental illness."

Smart's testimony was the first in what is expected to be a 10-day competency hearing that resumes Nov. 30. Thursday's appearance was scheduled so that Smart can leave soon for a Mormon mission. If Mitchell is ruled competent and if his case goes to trial, Smart will very likely testify again.

Related NPR Stories

Timeline: elizabeth smart's abduction and its aftermath, reuniting children with families after abduction, prosecutor: let elizabeth smart speak, correction nov. 1, 2009.

In the audio version of this story, Howard Berkes said that Elizabeth Smart gave her testimony 6,659 days after she had been abducted. He actually had calculated the correct number as 2,659 days but misspoke when he recorded the radio story.

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Elizabeth Smart marks 20 years since her rescue: ‘I didn’t know if I would survive’

Elizabeth Smart is reflecting on one of the most harrowing moments of her life.

The child safety activist and author shared a message about the love she’s received over the last two decades after she was rescued from her abductor. Smart was just 14 years old when she was kidnapped at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City bedroom in the middle of the night on June 5, 2002.

It would be nine months of being abused and fearing for her life before she was rescued.

“Yesterday was my 20 year rescue anniversary. I was able to celebrate by relaxing at home and spending time with my little family,” she wrote on March 13 on her Instagram . “Thank you so much for all the kind messages I received, the many prayers I’ve been the recipient of over the years, and all the love I’ve been shown.”

“I’ll never be able to express my full gratitude enough. It is fair to say I could have never imagined my life turning out the way it has,” she continued. “20 years ago when I was kidnapped I didn’t know if I would survive, each day was a question right up until I was rescued. Once I was rescued it was a rollercoaster of emotion and honestly felt like we were all stepping into the unknown.”

Smart, 35, added that while “it was difficult and often overwhelming,” looking back, she is grateful for her experiences and the path that it has led her down.

“Meeting my husband, having children, learning a whole new level of empathy and compassion, meeting the most amazing and dedicated individuals, and being able to devote my life to a cause that I feel so passionate about and feeling like I’m contributing to the betterment of humanity is more than I could ask for,” she wrote, before thanking her supporters.

Since being rescued, Smart has become an advocate  for sexual assault prevention and recovery. She also wrote a book about her harrowing experience , "My Story," which was released in 2013.

In February 2012, she married husband Matthew Gilmour. They are parents to three children, Chloe, James and Olivia.

Smart previously opened up about one day s haring her traumatizing story with her kids and how she doesn’t want to “hide” her past.

“With all my children, really, I certainly never want to hide what happened in the past, because every single one of us has a past,” Smart told E! News in 2021. “Every single one of us has had something happen in our lives. It’s unrealistic to think that we will all just have a perfect life. We will all face hardships and struggles, in whatever form that may be, and so I have begun to speak to (Chloe) as she asked questions.”

“But with that being said, it’s not all at once,” she added. “And it’s age-appropriate, to the best of my ability.”

Liz Calvario is a Los Angeles-based reporter and editor for TODAY.com who covers entertainment, pop culture and trending news.

“ Excellent…. Sullivan is herself an outstanding writer, tempering her evident admiration for Smart’s achievements with the wry reflections of those who knew her subject intimately…. Sullivan’s biography settles for no half-measures, and gives the tribute to Elizabeth Smart which her life among the rogues and rascals thoroughly deserves. Times Higher Education Supplement

“ Informed with enthusiasm… tells its story remarkably vividly. Elspeth Barker Independent on Sunday

“ Wonderful… as vibrant and gutsy as its subject. Good Housekeeping

Penguin Books, Canada, 1991; Lime Tree Press, England, 1991. Paperback 1992. Translated into Spanish by Laura Freixas, Circe Publishers, Barcelona, 1996. Le coeur jamais éteint: Une vie d’Elizabeth Smart. Translated by Marie Frankland Québec, Leméac, 2016.

Elizabeth Smart, author of one of the century’s most brilliant works of poetic prose, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept , lived a life of extremes. Rebelling against her affluent Canadian upbringing and exiling herself to London, she embarked on a passionate romance with George Barker—smitten by his poems long before she met him in person—in what was to become one of the most intense and extraordinary love affairs of this century. By Heart is, by turns, a compelling account of a remarkable woman’s single-handed struggle to support her four children, a literary love story, a portrait of mid-century bohemian artistic circles and, above all, the life of a gifted writer fighting for self-expression. By Heart was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction.

Critical Praise for By Heart

“Excellent…. Sullivan is herself an outstanding writer, tempering her evident admiration for Smart’s achievements with the wry reflections of those who knew her subject intimately…. Sullivan’s biography settles for no half-measures, and gives the tribute to Elizabeth Smart which her life among the rogues and rascals thoroughly deserves.” — Times Higher Education Supplement

“informed with enthusiasm… tells its story remarkably vividly.” —Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday

“Wonderful… as vibrant and gutsy as its subject.” — Good Housekeeping

“Writing her own sub-version of the Grand Central style, Rosemary Sullivan has produced a harmonious and illuminating account of a culture and habitat rich in significant incongruity.” — London Review of Books

“It is clear from the first page of this immensely readable book that the association of Rosemary Sullivan and Elizabeth Smart is one of the truly successful biographical pairings…. By Heart makes an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of women’s lives and rings yet another variation on the theme of how talents can be lost and voices suppressed.” — Globe and Mail

“ By Heart is a sensitive tribute to an important writer and an exceptional woman.” — The Ottawa Citizen

“A massive and poignantly rendered journey through one of the most fascinating lives in Canadian letters.” — NOW (Toronto)

“ By Heart has the momentum of a well-paced novel, but also the discursive intelligence to pick out the patterns in a life that Smart herself frequently found baffling.” — Maclean’s

“Sullivan demonstrates amazing empathy with her subject, and her biography itself becomes a work of art.” — The Toronto Sun

“Carefully and wonderfully, Rosemary Sullivan recreates a life, a myth, a world now past. Here are passion and sensitivities so strong and willful they outrun the grave.” —Fay Weldon

“When I finished Rosemary Sullivan’s enthralling life of Elizabeth Smart, my first response was to wonder how I could have lived so long without knowing anything about her except that she had written one of the most remarkable novels of our time. A second later I changed my mind and realized how fortunate I was to meet this amazing woman on the pages of one of the best contemporary biographies I have recently read. Ms. Sullivan writes so gracefully and with such objectivity and restraint that all the contradictions of Smart’s astonishing life leap off the pages with an impact that resonates in one’s mind long after the last page of her book is read … [She] has captured Smart’s vitality and complexity in what is sure to become a biography of international significance.” —Deirdre Bair, Author of Samuel Beckett, Simone De Beauvoir, and C. G. Jung

Rosemary Sullivan is the author of fifteen books in the multiple genres of biography, memoir, poetry, travelogue, and short fiction. Her books include Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen   which won a Governor General’s Award, The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out , Labyrinth of Desire: Women Passion and Romantic Obsession , Villa Air-Bel: World War II , Escape and a House in Marseille , Stalin’s Daughter which won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize, the BC National Non-Fiction Award, and the RBC Charles Taylor Prize, as well as the International Plutarch Award in Biography. The book was also a finalist for the PEN/ Bograd Weld for biography and the National Books Critics Circle Award. Her latest book The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation has been sold in twenty countries. In 2012 Sullivan became an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture.

Books by Rosemary Sullivan

• Where The World Was
• Stalin’s Daughter
• Villa Air-Bel
• Labyrinth of Desire
• Cuba: Grace Under Pressure
• Memory-Making: Selected Essays of Rosemary Sullivan
• The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out
• Shadow Maker: The Life of Gwendolyn MacEwen
• By Heart: Elizabeth Smart/A Life
• The Guthrie Road
• The Garden Master: The Poetry of Theodore Roethke

© 2024 Rosemary Sullivan.

• The Betrayal of Anne Frank
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Elizabeth Smart: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945)

• First Online: 21 January 2021

Cite this chapter

• Mark Axelrod-Sokolov 2  

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In her insightful introduction to Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept , the late, poetically gifted Brigid Brophy wrote that it is one of the “half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world.” What’s poetic prose read like? More importantly, what makes it poetic prose? When negotiating with notions of poetic prose, one usually marks the Symbolist poets as the point of departure, Baudelaire as the poet of departure, and how his poetic prose became the foundation for the majority of prose poetry subsequently written. Incorporating Baudelaire, this chapter explores Smart’s unique use of poetic prose within the framework of a novel in a manner novel for its time (118).

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Venus, while playing with her son Cupid, wounded her breast with one of his arrows. Before the wound healed, she saw Adonis and, captivated by him, gave up everything for him charging him not to do anything dangerous. Being Adonis he cannot abide by that and, ultimately, is killed by a boar.

Damocles, a flatterer, having extolled the happiness of Dionysius’ tyrant of Syracuse, was placed by him at a banquet with a sword suspended over his head by a hair to impress upon him the perilousness of that happiness.

Daphne. Here we have the love of the narrator and her paramour aligned with Daphne which relates to the myth of Daphne and Apollo who, struck by Cupid’s arrow, did everything he could to capture her. In his quest to obtain her, Daphne pleads with Peneüs, her father the river god, to save her in order to escape Apollo; he changes her into a laurel tree which Apollo covets and makes a laurel crown to wear.

Antaeus, son of Poseidon and Gaea, was a Libyan giant and wrestler whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth; those whom he defeated, died. Though he was strangled by Hercules while holding him off the ground.

Dido, daughter of Belus, King of Tyre. Her husband was secretly murdered by her brother Pygmalion for his money. She went to Africa, founded Carthage, and became its queen. When Aeneas came to Carthage, Dido fell in love with him. Dido tried to keep Aeneas with her and used every allurement and persuasion; when he left, she uttered a curse against the Trojans, stabbed herself, and died on a funeral pyre.

Works Consulted

Baudelaire, Charles. Oeuvres Complètes . Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1980.

Google Scholar  

Baudelaire, Charles. Paris Spleen . Trans. by Louise Varèse. New York: New Directions, 1970.

Broom, Peter & Chesters, Graham. The Appreciation of Modern French Poetry 1850–1950 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

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Caws, Mary Ann & Riffaterre, Hermine. The Prose Poem in France: Theory and Practice . New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.

Conley, Verena Andermatt. Hélène Cixous . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

Conley, Verena Andermatt. Hélène Cixous Writing the Feminine . London and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Horne, Dee. ‘Elizabeth Smart’s Novel Journal’. Studies in Canadian Literature . Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, 1991, 16:2.

Irigaray, Luce. je, tu, nous . Trans. by Alison Martin. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.

Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics . New York and London: Routledge, 1985.

Smart, Elizabeth. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept . London: Paladin, 1986.

Van Wert, Alice. ‘By Grand Central Station: The Novel as Poem’. Studies in Canadian Literature , Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, 1986, Spring, 11:1.

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Axelrod-Sokolov, M. (2021). Elizabeth Smart: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945). In: Untheories of Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59346-9_8

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Elizabeth Smart: A Fugue Essay on Women and Creativity

240 pages, Paperback

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TV Review: Lifetime’s ‘I Am Elizabeth Smart’

With the movie’s real-life subject Elizabeth Smart as on-screen narrator and off-camera producer, “I Am Elizabeth Smart” is a rare, exceptional Lifetime movie about redfining victimhood

By Sonia Saraiya

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“Do you want it to stop?” Elizabeth Smart asks. She is facing the camera directly, making eye contact. We are listening to the sound of her being raped for the first time — in Lifetime ’s dramatization of her 9-month abduction, starring Alana Boden as Smart and Skeet Ulrich as kidnapper and rapist Brian David Mitchell.

In what became a much publicized story of disappearance and reappearance, Smart was then just 14 years old, a pretty blonde teenager in Salt Lake City, Utah. One night in 2002, Mitchell dragged her out of bed at knifepoint, marched her into the woods, and “married” her, declaring that he was a prophet named Immanuel who had been called to take her as a wife. She had never had sex before; she had not even begun to menstruate. As Boden’s Smart is shrieking and pleading, the camera pans slowly away from them and cuts to the real-life Smart. “Do you want it to stop?” she asks, looking at the audience. “So did I.”

It does stop, for us. It doesn’t for Smart — and wouldn’t for nine months.

Popular on Variety

“ I Am Elizabeth Smart ” is both very like and very unlike the canon of Lifetime films, which frequently focus on a “woman in peril” and subjects already in the public eye. Its chronicle of Smart’s kidnapping and subsequent captivity is harrowing in the slightly pulpy, slightly overwrought way that most of its stories are. From a dramatic standpoint, the film probably leans a bit too hard on suspenseful string music and gold-tinted flashbacks; Ulrich is so revolting, as Mitchell, that he’s enthusiastically and a bit distractingly chewing the scenery. But Smart’s presence casts the production into an entirely different light. It’s the story of a woman in peril, narrated by and featuring the woman in peril herself, telling the audience what really happened to her and how it felt. The perspective elevates the dramatization from a titillating scary story to spoken-word horror.

Partly this is because Smart herself is an extraordinary human being. In the 15 years since she was abducted and then recovered, Smart has made it a kind of mission to speak publicly about her ordeal and advocate for victims of kidnapping and sexual assault. Her on-screen presence is calm and poised with an inner light that is hard to imitate. And partly this is because it is so rare, even now, for the victim of sexual assault to so thoroughly own the narrative around her abduction. Smart, for a variety of reasons, has managed to escape the typical matrix of doubt and judgment that surrounds survivors.

A topic she has returned to again and again — it was even the subject of a New Yorker prof ile about her — is that she was not a victim of Stockholm’s Syndrome. “Everything I did, I did to survive,” she says, both in that profile and in “I Am Elizabeth Smart.” As she relates in the film, for the nine months she was Mitchell’s captive, she plotted her escape — listening, watching, and waiting for the right moment.

Smart seems to be defending herself from straw-man criticisms, but perhaps she is so vehement because mostly she is defending herself from herself — from her own shame and horror at what occurred, and the long tail of self-recrimination that would judge her for cooperating in order to survive. The title, with its bold declarative statement of self, is a statement of truth that at different points in the narrative could either condemn her or liberate her. More than once during her captivity, Elizabeth has the choice to draw others into her panic, and more than once, she opts not to. In those moments, the camera zooms in on Boden’s face, and the background around her grows fuzzy: The isolation of trauma, illustrated. Smart says to the camera that she was afraid for her life, and for the safety of her family. But another truth emerges: This 14-year-old girl knew she was strong enough to handle Brian David Mitchell, even as he was torturing her, until she could escape on her own terms.

Cinematically, her narration serves to interrupt the typical patterns of this kind of movie — which, if untethered from the real-life details, is just another thriller about how terrible violence against women is banal and ubiquitous. Stories of abused women are both remarkably female-centric and at the same time often draw in a viewer with the promise of some titillation; that edge of erotic fear, anticipating consummation, is both horrible and enticing. The camera always cuts before anything really bad happens, right? Smart sees you looking at “her” — and she looks back, preventing the viewer from abstracting her rape(s) into just sound effects and shadows. Smart’s voiceover serves as a bodily rearrangement of the convenient grooves this narrative might otherwise take. There is no redemption for Brian David Mitchell, or for his delusional “first wife” Hepzibah, real name Wanda Barzee (Deirdre Lovejoy), whose fanatical devotion to “Immanuel” makes his abuse of Elizabeth possible. And when Boden as Smart returns home, she doesn’t shed a tear. Instead she coolly observes the bedroom she was abducted from nine months earlier and decides she will sleep in there alone. It’s hard not to weep — not because she is suffering, though she did; but because she shouldn’t have had to be quite so strong, and yet she was anyway.

Of course, “I Am Elizabeth Smart” is a Lifetime movie, with all the connotations that implies. And on the other hand, it is remarkable because it is a Lifetime movie; it is a remarkable Lifetime movie. Much like Smart herself, it is restrained, unpretentious, and direct. And to the cast and crew’s credit, nothing about it diminishes Smart’s ordeal or plays it up for manufactured horrors; it simply is , which is plenty horrible enough. It’s not quite “Room,” the 2015 Oscar-winning film about another captive girl plotting her escape. But in its way, it is a startling, bold film.

TV Movie. Lifetime, Sat. Nov. 18. 120 min.

• Production: Executive producers, Steve Michaels, Jonathan Koch, Joan Harrison, Allison Berkley, Joseph Freed, Barbara Lieberman, Tom Patricia
• Cast: Alana Boden, Skeet Ulrich, Deirdre Lovejoy, Elizabeth Smart

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Why Even Elizabeth Smart Can't Watch The Lifetime Documentary About Her Kidnapping

If you were around in the early 2000s, then you probably remember hearing about Elizabeth Smart. In June of 2002, the 14-year-old was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah by a man and was held captive for nine months before she was rescued by police. Her harrowing story made national headlines, and it's now become the subject of a new Lifetime movie: I Am Elizabeth Smart . But just how accurate is I Am Elizabeth Smart ? Is the new movie a faithful retelling of Smart's actual kidnapping, or is it an over-dramatized piece of schlock entertainment?

Although Lifetime has a bit of a reputation for churning out melodramatic guilty pleasure movies — not that there's anything wrong with that — this new movie isn't one of them. I Am Elizabeth Smart is astoundingly accurate, often feeling more like a documentary filled with reenactment scenes than a dramatization. And there's a good reason as to why that is. Smart herself tells the story, acting as the film's on-screen narrator and making sure that everything that's shown is what actually happened to her. She also serves as a producer on the film, furthering her involvement with the production and ensuring its accuracy.

The movie is meant to coincide with the 15th anniversary of Smart's kidnapping , and it marks the first time the kidnapping victim has told her full story on screen. There have been previous attempts at telling the tale before, most notably in the 2003 television film The Elizabeth Smart Story , but none have had the level of involvement from Smart that I Am Elizabeth Smart does. "If you look at [ The Elizabeth Smart Story ], it really doesn’t portray what Elizabeth endured," executive producer Joseph Freed said during a TCA panel, according to Deadline's Amanda N'Duka. "It doesn’t even mention the word rape when that was a pivotal part of what Elizabeth overcame. Now we can tell the complete story and do it with Elizabeth herself."

In the film, which can be difficult to watch, Smart doesn't sugarcoat what happened to her. The movie shows her captor — Brian David Mitchell , portrayed by Skeet Ulrich — abduct her from her bedroom with a knife to her neck; her little sister sleeping by her side. It shows her being stripped by Mitchell's accomplice, Wanda Barzee (Deirdre Lovejoy), and forced to put on a ceremonial robe before being "wed" to Mitchell, who proceeds to rape her. It describes how Mitchell would continue to rape her every single day, often multiple times a day, for the entire nine months she was in captivity . It shows how she and Barzee were left in the desert without water for a week by Mitchell, and had their lives saved by a freak rain storm that Smart attributes to an act of God. All of these things really happened, and they're all accurately shown in the film.

Smart herself watched the finished product, and found it to be so accurate in its depictions of the horrible experiences she endured that it made her not want to ever watch it again . "I'm pretty proud of it and I've watched it ... but I never want to watch it again," Smart said during a TCA panel, according to E! News' Tierney Bricker. "It was so accurate. It was terrifying and so intense and part of me was like, 'I don't know if I want to feel all of these emotions again,' ... It did turn out to be what I wanted it to be. I am very proud of it."

Smart — who now works as an advocate for child safety and sexual abuse prevention — didn't make a film about her kidnapping as a piece of entertainment; nor did she do it because she's some sort of masochist. Her goal in telling her full, true story in I Am Elizabeth Smart is to offer hope to people who've been in similar situations. "Why did I tell you this story?" Smart asks at the end of the film. "The children like me, the others who have it worse, the ones who don't come home... I wanted to tell you, as someone who has been through Hell, that there still is hope. Find a miracle, hold onto it, and keep going. I'm not cracked. I'm not shattered. I am Elizabeth Smart."

I Am Elizabeth Smart can be a tough movie to watch, and it's made all the more difficult knowing that everything that happens on screen really happened to Smart. But the silver lining is that Smart's experience didn't break her, and now she's telling her story as a way to inspire and help others.

Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart Essay Example

Elizabeth Smart was a young girl at the age of fourteen who was kidnapped from her home on June 5, 2002. The kidnapping took place in Salt Lake City; Utah and she was held captive for nine months before she was found. Once Elizabeth Smart was found and she grew from this traumatic point in her life, she became an advocate for missing people and victims of sexual assault. Brian Mitchell and Wanda Brazee were sentenced to prison for their horrible actions. Elizabeth now lives in Park City, Utah with her husband and kids and is making a difference in so many people's lives. The kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart and her perspective changed her and many other victims of kidnapping and sexual assault. Although Elizabeth is now in life is extraordinary, her recovery has profound effects on her development as a person. 

The kidnapping took place in the early hour on June 5, 2002. Elizabeth Smart shared a room with her nine-year-old sister Mary Katherine who was a witness during the investigation. During the kidnapping of Elizabeth, Brian Mitchell held Elizabeth at knifepoint while Mary Katherine pretended to be asleep, but she was watching it unfold right in front of her eyes. One Brian and Elizabeth had left at four o'clock in the morning, Mary Katherine hurried to her parents' room to tell them what had happened but, according to In touch Weekly, “Two hours after that, she went to her parents and said, “Elizabeth’s gone” — and her parents, Ed, and Lois, immediately assumed she was having a bad dream,” They realized shortly after that the screen on the window had been cut with a knife and the dream became reality. That reality had lasted a long excruciating nine months long. Those long months eventually ended on March 12, 2003; Elizabeth was found alive only 18 miles from her house. Brian Mitchell and Wanda Brazee was finally charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, and aggravated burglary. This was not all Brian and Wanda had for them, more was on their way for them.  

On July 26, 2005, Brian Mitchell was deemed unfit for trial one year after Wanda Brazee was deemed unfit for trial. After four more excruciatingly painful years of hearings after hearings, Barzee pleads guilty on the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. According to the Biography of Elizabeth Smart, shortly after Brazee pleads guilty Brian Mitchell is now deemed competent for trial. While Brazee received her 15-year sentence for the kidnapping and sexual assault of Elizabeth and the attempted for Elizabeths’ cousin, Mitchell's trial began on November 1, 2010. During the trial, Smart now can tell her story about what went on during her kidnapping in 2002. Barzee takes the plea deal and testifies against Mitchell during the trial. According to the Biography of Elizabeth Smart, Barzee explains the "revelation" that drove her husband's desire to abduct girls until he had 350 wives,” On December 10, 2010, Mitchell was convicted and finally on May 25, 2011, he was sentenced to life in prison. During these exceedingly long 6 years Elizabeth Finally got her justice and was able to grow into who she is not as a person.  

Elizabeth Smart made her recovery and turned into an amazing journalist and activist in helping people who were sexually assaulted as well as kidnapped. By Elizabeth being a journalist, it raised awareness to sexual assault victims as well as kidnapping, she also dove deeper into other cases such as her own. Elizabeth is continuing to change many people's lives and changing the world day by day. She used her recovery and created a platform for people like her who went through something similar. According to the Nicki swift article about Elizabeth Smart, Elizabeth launched the “Elizabeth Smart Foundation” which teams up with groups such as the Internet Crimes Against Children task force to help prevent human trafficking, while also offering educational support to students about violent and sexual crimes. Elizabeth is continuing to change many people's lives by giving them hope of knowing they are not alone, and they can speak out about it.  

Going through a traumatic experience such as sexual assault or kidnapping, such as Elizabeth Smart and many other people, causes many mental and physical issues. And, according to Scholarly Journals, “Kidnapping is one of the most psychologically damaging crimes of all.” People who have been sexually assaulted and or kidnapped take years to recover and a lot of times, some never fully make that recovery. It is extraordinary that Elizabeth was able to take her trauma and turn it into a meaningful way to help others get the help they need and be able to prevent what happened to herself.  

In conclusion, Elizabeths’ story is quite extraordinary. Elizabeth took her pain and trauma and made a platform for other victims of sexual assault and kidnapping to speak up against it. It is fascinating how during the time of Elizabeths’ recovery, we were able to grow with her and give that support for her and other people who went through a situation like this. Elizabeths’ platform gave people a sense of not feeling alone and that they can get through this. Elizabeths' story is continuing to change peoples’ lives for the better and giving them the help, they need.  

Make citations for these 

Ott, Tim. “Elizabeth Smart: A Complete Timeline of Her Kidnapping, Rescue and Aftermath.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 1 June 2021, https://www.biography.com/news/elizabeth-smart-timeline-story. 

The Psychological Impact of Kidnapping - Scholarly Journals. http://www.scholarly-journals.com/sjsre/publications/2016/March/pdf/Akwash.pdf. 

Szabo, Sarah. “Where Is Elizabeth Smart Today?” NickiSwift.com, Nicki Swift, 23 Aug. 2021, https://www.nickiswift.com/23026/elizabeth-smart-today/. 

“Elizabeth Smart.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 20 Apr. 2021, https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/elizabeth-smart.

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The Case of Elizabeth Smart

On June 5, 2002, 15-year-old Salt Lake City resident Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her home. Nine months later, on March 12, 2003, Elizabeth was found alive, and apparently in good physical health. In connection with the crime, the police arrested 49-year-old Brian Mitchell – a homeless man whom Elizabeth’s parents had employed as a day laborer in their home shortly before Elizabeth’s disappearance – and his wife, 57-year-old Wanda Barzee.

Mitchell is claimed to have wanted to take Elizabeth as one of his seven “celestial” wives. (A celestial marriage, one that extends into the afterlife, must take place in a Mormon temple, be performed by a Mormon priest, and follow strict ceremonial rules.)

It was soon disclosed that for most of her absence, Elizabeth had been in the Salt Lake City area, often within short distances of her home. She had also frequently ventured out in public with her alleged abductors. As a result, many factual questions began to emerge. Had she tried to contact her family? Did she try to escape? Was she brainwashed? What was the motive for the kidnapping, and exactly what occurred during the months Elizabeth was gone? Were her kidnappers delusional?

In the main, these questions have yet to be answered. It is unclear, for instance, why Elizabeth did not take the opportunity to escape. Was she simply a very obedient child, as her pre-capture website posting stated? Did she fear for her life? Her young sister has claimed her abductor had a weapon. Was she “brainwashed” or experiencing “Stockholm syndrome” – a psychological state in which hostages are said to identify with their abductors and resist capture? Or is it possible that she believed, of her own volition, that she was called to be Mitchell’s wife? Again, the website had described her as “very spiritual.”

Fortunately, the legal backdrop, and some of the legal issues that are likely to arise, are clearer than the facts are at this point.

Kidnapping: The Evolution of the Crime

Kidnapping is actually a combination of two crimes. One is abduction, which involves taking a person from one place to another. The other is false imprisonment, defined as holding a person against his or her will.

Initially, kidnapping statutes – including the Federal Kidnapping Act – were primarily designed to punish taking people for ransom. One leading Supreme Court case interpreting that Act is Chatwin v. United States – a 1946 case with facts eerily parallel to those in the Smart case.

In Chatwin, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a 68-year-old widower and two others who had transported a fourteen-year-old girl to another state to enter into a Mormon “celestial marriage” with him. The Court held that the evidence supporting the charge of kidnapping – and in particular, the assertion that the girl had been “held” against her will or by deception – was insufficient, given the narrow purposes of the then-applicable Act.

Fortunately for prosecutors in cases such as Elizabeth’s, modern kidnapping statutes are broader. The federal kidnapping statute that currently applies has a broader reach than the prior Federal Kidnapping Act. In addition, some states, including Utah, have “aggravated” kidnapping laws. Apparently, either federal or Utah law could be applied in the Smart case, for she was reportedly taken across state lines, to California.

On March 18, state prosecutors announced that they had charged Mitchell and Barzee with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, and aggravated burglary under Utah law. Both aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping carry maximum penalties of life in prison; convictions on the sex charges could mean that the defendants would be labeled as violent sexual predators, and confined for life in a state prison hospital in the event they receive less than life terms.

“Aggravated” kidnapping is typically defined as kidnapping undertaken for the purpose of committing another crime, for the purpose of committing a sexual crime, or with the intent to harm the victim. The kidnapping of Patty Hearst – done in part to force her to commit robbery – would be a clear example.

Lack of consent is an element of every kidnapping offense; but, for minors, there is a question of whose consent it must be. Under Utah law, if the victim is, like Elizabeth, between 14 and 18 years of ago, she cannot be detained or restrained against her own will. In contrast, if she were under 14, the power to consent would, instead, have belonged to her parents, and her own consent would have been irrelevant.

Thus to prevail on the aggravated kidnapping charge, the prosecutors will need to show that Elizabeth was detained against her own will. As the trial of Patty Hearst indicated (Hearst was convicted in connection with her abductors’ bank robbery), proving that one was brainwashed or coerced is difficult.

The Different Types of Kidnapping, and Where Elizabeth’s Fits

The FBI categorizes kidnappings according to the relationship of the perpetrator to the victim: family member, acquaintance, or stranger. Most perpetrators of child kidnappings are parents or acquaintances. Strangers account for less than a quarter of child abductions.

If Mitchell is indeed the perpetrator, then Elizabeth’s kidnapping falls somewhere between a “stranger” and an “acquaintance” kidnapping. An “acquaintance” is usually defined as someone with an ongoing relationship with one of the parents – often a boyfriend or family friend. But Mitchell had limited contact with the family, by their own account; they say that he worked at the Smart house on one day, for only five hours.

If the Smart kidnapping is styled an “acquaintance” kidnapping, it is relatively typical. Such kidnappings are the most frequent kind when the victim is a teenager. In addition, “acquaintance” perpetrators often remove the victim from his or her home, as was the case with Elizabeth. They also snatch their victims at night – as was the case with Elizabeth – almost as often as during the daytime.

Thus, Elizabeth’s was a typical “acquaintance” kidnapping, except for one fact: the suspect allegedly used a weapon in the abduction (Elizabeth’s sister says Mitchell had a knife), which is unusual.

What if, instead, we view Elizabeth’s kidnapping as a “stranger” kidnapping? In that event, it is somewhat atypical. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 4,600 children are abducted each year by strangers, but the vast majority of these kidnappings by strangers are of short duration and result in nether physical injury or death. In only 100 or so of these cases is the child held for an extended period of time – as Elizabeth was – or killed, or made the subject of ransom demands.

Victims of stranger kidnappings are almost equally divided between children under 6 years of age and teenagers. Like acquaintance perpetrators, stranger perpetrators strike at night almost as often as they do during the daytime.

Not the Usual Suspects: The Role Apparent Mental Illness May Play

Though the Smart case fits fairly well into the typology of kidnapping, Mitchell and Barzee are not the usual perpetrators. Both are homeless and have histories of mental instability.

Brian Mitchell grew up in Salt Lake City, the third child in a family of six. His childhood was troubled, to say the least. In a March 16 interview with CNN, Brian’s father, Shirl, revealed, among other things, that he had shared his obsession with pornographic pictures with his son; described how he had left Brian in a city park for a period of time at age 12, so that Brian could learn to appreciate having a home; and disclosed that Brian may have been sexually abused in day care.

As an adult, Brian Mitchell served as a low-level official of the Mormon Church, but he was excommunicated for criticizing the church’s abandonment of polygamy. After that, Mitchell walked the streets of Salt Lake City in a long white robe allegedly preaching “the gospel of Jesus” and referring to himself as “Emmanuel” – a Hebrew word meaning “God is with us”.

Mitchell is also said to have written a “manifesto,” which he calls his own Book of Mormon (the Book of Mormon is the Latter Day Saints’ equivalent of the Christian Bible or the Islamic Koran). His mother filed for a protective order to keep him and Barzee away from her, because she said they were threatening to destroy her home and to harm her for questioning the “manifesto.”

Mitchell’s attorney, Larry Long, said that Mitchell believed that he had been called by God to take Elizabeth as his wife. In disclosing this, Long may be laying the groundwork for an insanity defense. Could it work?

A Fine Line Between Fringe Religious Beliefs and Insanity

Psychiatric expert testimony will, of course, ultimately determine if Mitchell and Barzee can successfully assert an insanity defense, on the ground that they were suffering from a delusional or other psychotic disorder. Indeed, it has been suggested that the prosecutor added the aggravated sexual battery charge, in expectation of an insanity plea and to brand Mitchell as a sex offender. Speculations are that jurors will be less likely to accept an insanity defense if sexual assault is proven.

Utah has a very strict insanity defense law, similar to that of Texas (which I wrote about in a prior column on the Andrea Yates case). Notwithstanding the existence of a mental disease or defect, if a defendant had the intent to commit the crime – known as the mens rea element – he can be found guilty. The jury issue would be fairly straightforward: Did Mitchell and Barzee have the intent to take and hold Elizabeth against her will?

It may be difficult to determine where religious beliefs end and where mental instability, even mental illness, begins. What the law calls kidnapping, Mitchell thinks is divine revelation. Does this mean he believes religious authorizes him to break the law (which would not be a defense)? Or does it mean he is delusional?

The line-drawing problem is only aggravated by the fact that belief that one is visited by spirits or has had a revelation – one symptom of psychosis – is also a not-uncommon belief in some religions, including the Latter-Day Saints.

Joseph Smith, father of the Mormon religion, was guided by a divine revelation. All Mormons believe that they existed as pre-mortal spirits before their human birth. They believe that certain Mormon men are “called” to the priesthood. Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle are said to have had a dream the night before her return that she was alive and involved in a religious cult. Even her father said he had dreams about Elizabeth “coming walking into our room.”

Meanwhile, Mitchell’s wife, Barzee, may also have been delusional – though for her, the line may be easier to draw. A friend has reported that Barzee thought Elizabeth was her daughter. In the end, Barzee and Mitchell may be found to have been partners in psychosis, sharing delusions or fantasies – in a rare psychological phenomenon known as folie a deux.

What Are We To Make Of This Case?

We may never know the truth about Elizabeth’s abduction and the time she spent in “captivity.” The mental state and religious beliefs of her and her captors before, during and after the experience, relentless publicity, and intense pre-trial questioning that impedes accurate recall will all affect the trial version of events.

Just as investigators looking for tangible evidence are hampered by the passage of time and the spoliation of physical clues, so too are those who search for intangible and psychological clues thwarted by the way a case like this takes on a life of its own–a life that may, or may not, reflect what really happened to Elizabeth Smart in the nine months between June 5, 2002 and March 12, 2003.

ELAINE CASSEL practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia and is a contributor to Counterpunch and Findlaw.com , where another version of this essay originally appeared. She is the chair of the American Bar Association’s Behavioral Science Committee of the Science and Technology Law Section and is the author, with Douglas Bernstein, of Criminal Behavior (Allyn & Bacon, 2001). She also teaches law and psychology. She can be reached at: [email protected] .

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New Statue Honors Elizabeth II—and Her Beloved Corgis

The seven-foot-tall bronze monument is billed as the “first permanent memorial” to the late queen

Daily Correspondent

It’s no secret that Elizabeth II loved her corgis. Wherever she went, the short-legged dogs followed, a sight Princess Diana once described as a “ moving carpet .”

Now, the late queen’s relationship with her dogs has been immortalized in bronze: A seven-foot-tall statue of Elizabeth and her dogs, created by London-based sculptor  Hywel Pratley , was unveiled Sunday on what would’ve been her 98th birthday. The monarch, who reigned for more than 70 years, died in September 2022 at age 96.

The new monument is located on a lush, grassy area outside the library in Oakham, England, a small town about 100 miles north of London.

Various dignitaries attended the unveiling ceremony. But perhaps more importantly, more than 40 corgis from the Welsh Corgi League also showed up to the event and then joined a parade to Oakham Castle, reports  Tatler ’s Ben Jureidini.

The piece was commissioned by Sarah Furness, the Lord-Lieutenant of Rutland (Oakham is part of Rutland County). It cost £125,000 (approximately $155,000) and was funded primarily by donations, per  BBC News ’ Samantha Noble.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rutland County Council (@rutlandcouncil)

The Rutland County Council described the piece as “the first permanent memorial” to Britain’s “much-loved and longest reigning monarch.”

The work depicts Elizabeth standing tall while wearing a state robe and a crown. A bronze corgi sits at her feet, nestled against the folds of her gown. The statue of the queen rests atop a pedestal made of local Ancaster limestone, which features two additional bronze corgis—one with its front paws on the pedestal, and the other standing on all fours.

The dogs are meant to be “a metaphor for the security and safety the nation somehow felt during the Elizabethan era,” Pratley tells Tatler .

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hywel Pratley Sculpture (@hywelpratleysculpture)

Pratley started working on the project in January 2023. Though his brief was simple, the artist wanted to achieve nothing less than perfection for the project. He spent four months sculpting the queen and her corgis—and used 800 kilograms (1,764 pounds) of clay in the process. Once satisfied with the clay maquettes, he made silicone and fiberglass molds. Finally, he spent four months casting the statues in bronze, per Tatler .

As for nailing the queen’s look, Pratley studied the countless photos captured during her long reign.

“Her great beauty was in her young to early middle age, round about 40, when she had had some children and was at the height of her power,” he tells  BBC News ’ Dan Martin, Jo Hollis and Jeremy Ball.

He wanted the finished piece to express a “maternal” feeling, and he decided to incorporate the dogs to “tap into the queen’s humanity,” he tells BBC News. He even had a few real corgis come into his studio and pose for him, according to a  post on Instagram.

“We've designed it with a bench you can sit on, and there’s a corgi you can pat,” he adds. “I do think it’s inevitably going to be a statue that encourages selfies.”

Pratley’s statue is indicative of a sea change in how Britain’s monarchs are depicted. Unlike the “stern statues of Queen Victoria found across Britain,” the new and forthcoming depictions of Elizabeth present the queen as “warm and approachable,” writes the  New York Times ’ Alex Marshall.

Several other communities, including  Newcastle-under-Lyme and  Test Valley , are also planning to unveil Elizabeth statues in the near future. Additionally, a committee is working on a national memorial to the queen.

Pembroke Welsh corgis were originally bred in Wales to help herd cattle, as their short stature helps them avoid being kicked by cows.

Elizabeth first fell in love with the breed when she was just 7 years old, then still a princess. That year, her father, George VI, gave her a corgi named Dookie as a gift. Later, on her 18th birthday, she was given another corgi named Susan. Elizabeth loved Susan so much that she even brought the dog on her honeymoon with Prince Philip.

Throughout her lifetime, the queen owned more than 30 dogs—some corgis and some “dorgis,” a cross between a dachshund and a corgi.

At the time of her death, she had at least three pups: a pair of corgis named Muick and Sandy, and a cocker spaniel named Lissy. Her dorgi, named  Candy , reportedly  died a few weeks before the queen’s death, though there are conflicting accounts of Candy’s fate.

The corgis  went to live with Elizabeth’s son, Prince Andrew, and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. It’s unclear what happened to Lissy.

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Sarah Kuta | READ MORE

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

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Guest Essay

Liz Truss Is Coming for America

By Tanya Gold

Ms. Gold is a British journalist who has written for Harper’s Magazine, The Spectator and UnHerd.

Liz Truss was the prime minister of Britain for 49 days in 2022, an interregnum between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak that was so short, it was outlasted by a lettuce . In the annals of British decline, she will be remembered for having been in office just three days when Queen Elizabeth II died and for her plan for an enormous and apparently unfunded tax cut, which she abruptly dropped after a run on the pound.

If this were the 19th century, Ms. Truss would have perhaps exiled herself to a country estate where peacocks roamed the grounds or fought her enemies with pistols. (In 1809 the foreign secretary, George Canning, was wounded in a duel with the war minister.) But this is not a time of penance or honor. Instead she has reinvented herself as a populist and has a new book, “ Ten Years to Save the West : Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment,” which is part memoir, part pitch to the American right: She has seen the deep state up close and knows what needs to be done.

This is not Ms. Truss’s first political transformation. She began her career as an anti-monarchy member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, before transmogrifying into an uneasy Margaret Thatcher tribute act. She voted to remain in the European Union and then remade herself as a champion of Brexit. She survived every government from 2012 until her own. As environment secretary, she got memorably angry about cheese — “We import two-thirds of our cheese. That. Is. A. Disgrace” — but was never really considered a likely leader of the Conservative Party until her predecessor Mr. Johnson almost burned the party down .

When she did get her turn and tried to execute her vision of a low-tax, low-regulation, high-growth Britain, it did not go well. After she announced her economic program, the pound sank, interest rates shot up, and the Bank of England had to intervene . Abandoning a central plank of the plan was not enough to mollify her critics, and she resigned soon after. (Even Mr. Canning, who survived his wounds and eventually became prime minister, lasted longer. He died of pneumonia after 119 days.)

People deal with public failure in different ways. For Ms. Truss, the method seems to be twofold. First, to insist that she was and is right but was foiled by the deep state. Second, to see if America might buy what she’s selling.

Last April she gave the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she sketched out how she was foiled by the establishment. “I simply underestimated the scale and depth of this resistance and the scale and depth to which it reached into the media and into the broader establishment,” she said. The anti-growth movement — in which she seems to include President Biden, the I.M.F., the British Treasury and the Bank of England, among others — is “focused on redistributionism, on stagnation and on the imbuing of woke culture into our businesses.”

This year, in February, she told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland that “the West has been run by the left for too long, and we’ve seen that it’s been a complete disaster.” (The Conservatives have governed Britain for 14 years.) Real conservatives, she said, “are now operating in what is a hostile environment. We essentially need a bigger bazooka in order to be able to deliver.” While at CPAC, she also spoke to Steve Bannon, whom she invited to “come over to Britain and sort out Britain,” and told Nigel Farage that she “felt safer for the West” when Donald Trump was president.

And now here is “Ten Years to Save the West,” which in title seems squarely aimed at America but in content often feels oddly parochial. Ms. Truss writes of traveling to Balmoral to accept Elizabeth II’s invitation to form a government. Here, Elizabeth II is a soothsayer. “She warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”

She is not sure that the flat above Downing Street “would be rated well on Airbnb.” It felt “a bit soulless,” she writes. It was apparently infested with fleas. And she couldn’t sleep because of the noise, including the clock at nearby Horse Guards, which chimed every quarter-hour. Picturing her flea-bitten and exhausted made me think of a line from Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” — “Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied ?”

By the time she got to her resignation, she writes, it “seemed like just another dramatic moment in a very strange film in which I had somehow been cast,” which, to me, felt like truth.

It’s unclear whether Ms. Truss will be able to read an American room any better than a British one. In the book, she describes America as Britain’s “proudest creation, albeit an unintentional one,” and she is critical of Mr. Biden, who called her tax cuts for the wealthy a “ mistake .” “This was utter hypocrisy and ignorance,” she writes. She notes, on the other hand, that she was an early fan of “The Apprentice” and enjoyed Mr. Trump’s “catchphrases and sassy business advice.”

But Americans who fear the deep state aren’t necessarily the ones who want a small one, and Ms. Truss is a poor public speaker. I’d expect conservative Americans to see her as a curio and move on to more familiar and charismatic icons. But one never knows.

Who is to blame for Liz Truss? Maybe it was the winds of history. Or a political system that rewards risk takers and narcissism. Or it was 14 years of one party in power, at the end of which are the people who hung on long enough.

Or it was Mr. Johnson, who made her foreign secretary in his government. (He is now a tabloid columnist writing about his late-night chorizo binges and how much he loves his lawn mower , so he has nothing to laugh about, either.)

The Conservative Party is packing for the wilderness. Many lawmakers are not even standing in the forthcoming election, which must be held by January. And Ms. Truss herself may lose her seat, in Norfolk, to James Bagge, who is standing as an independent. Mr. Bagge is part of a local cohort concerned about issues like the National Health Service and the cost of living and unimpressed by Ms. Truss’s globe-trotting. “Truss says she has 10 years to save the West,” he recently told The London Times. “Well, we have six months to save Norfolk.”

I wonder whether Ms. Truss is coming for America because her enemies in Norfolk are coming for her. The Conservative endgame is here. The land of opportunity beckons.

Tanya Gold is a British journalist.

Photographs by Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press and RunPhoto, Issaraway Tattong, Cathering Fall Commerical, Flashpop, posteriori, and Carl Court/Getty Images.

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