Eagle and the Dove

The two saints whose lives Vita Sackville-West contrasts in this double biography were recorded by very different epithets: ''the great'' and ''the little''. Both women were Carmelites, both canonised and both shared the same name. But whilst Teresa of Avila was aristocratic, intellectual, vigorous and humorous, a Spanish woman of the sixteenth century, Thérèse of Lisieux was a guileless and senti...