We are so excited for Paula McLain’s extraordinary new novel Love and Ruin, a tale of the real-life relationship between two unstoppable writers, but we couldn’t wait to share these tidbits about Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with you!

1. It all began at Christmas...
… when the pair met in 1936 in Florida. A short time later they travelled to Spain together, where Martha (a journalist and war correspondent) was reporting on the Spanish Civil War.

(source: AFR)

2. Martha and Ernest were married for five years...
 ... but their on-again-off-again affair began four years prior while Ernest was still married to his second wife.
(source: Daily Mail)

3. Hemingway dedicated his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls to Martha...
… but by then he had already dedicated previous novels to previous wives, so this was a pattern.
(source: routeduvin.typepad.com)

4. Martha's long absences on assignment famously irritated Hemingway...
… but she was dedicated to her life as a reporter, and continued to be until she retired from journalism in the early 90s – when she was almost 80 years old.
(source: filio.nzz)

5. Both Ernest and Martha went on to marry again after their divorce in 1945.
Ernest was married to his fourth wife at the time of his death, and Martha moved to London to be with her second husband, where she would live the rest of her life.
(source: giphy)

6. Both authors died of suicide.
Hemingway shot himself in 1961, 15 years after his divorce from Gellhorn, with Martha reportedly swallowing a cyanide pill after a long battle against cancer in 1998.
(source: nicknotas.com)

7. Did you know HBO produced a film about their affair?
Released in 2012, it starred Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen. Martha was also a subject of the 2011 documentary No Job for a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Report WWII.
(source: d2zkrhcchwordv.cloudfront.net)