Editing Rebecca West (section)

===Later life===

As West grew older, she turned to broader political and social issues, including mankind's propensity to inflict violent injustice on itself. Before and during World War II, West travelled widely, collecting material for books on travel and politics. In 1936–38, she made three trips to [[Yugoslavia]], a country she came to love, seeing it as the nexus of European history since the late Middle Ages. Her non-fiction masterpiece, ''Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'' is an amalgamation of her impressions from these trips. ''[[The New York Times|New York Times]]'' reviewer Katherine Woods wrote: "In two almost incredibly full-packed volumes one of the most gifted and searching of modern English novelists and critics has produced not only the magnification and intensification of the travel book form, but, one may say, its apotheosis."

West was assigned by Ross' magazine to cover the [[Nuremberg trials]] for ''The New Yorker'', an experience she memorialized in the book ''A Train of Powder''. In 1950, she was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter W|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterW.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=29 July 2014}}</ref> She also went to South Africa in 1960 to report on [[apartheid]] in a series of articles for ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', particularly regarding a prominent trial for a seditious uprising aiming to establish Communist rule.

She accidentally misidentified a South African judge<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/br/0004/prose.html|title=Lingua Franca Book Review|website=linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org}}</ref> for some questions put by another judge and was sued for libel along with the ''Sunday Times'' whose editor, Harry Hodson, failed to support West.<ref name="newenglishreview.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?sec_id=190622|title=Rebecca West and the Flowers of Evil|website=www.newenglishreview.org}}</ref> She wrote "My problem is complicated by the fact that the defence, the people who would naturally be against the Judge and for me, are mostly Communist and won't lift a finger for me. It worries me a lot. It's so hard to work with this hanging over me." She felt her only support was her friends, the anti-apartheid politician [[Bernard Friedman]] and his wife, with whom she stayed in Johannesburg. "I will get over this case. But it isn't easy to feel that some people are for no reason that you know of possessed by an intention to ruin you; and I also felt I was letting you down in South Africa. I have been deeply grateful for all the kindness and sympathy you have shown me and I thought of Tall Trees as a warm place in a chilly world."<ref name="newenglishreview.org"/>

She travelled extensively well into old age. In 1966 and 1969, she undertook two long journeys to [[Mexico]], becoming fascinated by the indigenous culture of the country and [[Mestizos in Mexico|its mestizo population]]. She stayed with actor [[Romney Brent]] in [[Mexico City]] and with Katherine (Kit) Wright, a long-time friend, in [[Cuernavaca]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|pp=353–9}}</ref>