In 1933, Sybille published an article critical of the Nazi regime in "Die Sammlung", the literary magazine of Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann. When her Jewish ancestry was subsequently discovered by the Nazis, her German bank accounts were frozen. At this time it was difficult for her to renew her German passport, and staying in Italy without a valid passport or a source of income carried the risk of being deported to Germany. Aldous Huxley's wife Maria came up with a solution in 1935. Maria is known to have said, on the question of who should marry Sybille, "We need to get one of our bugger friends." Sybille entered a marriage of convenience with an English Army officer, Walter "Terry" Bedford (an ex-boyfriend of a former manservant of W. H. Auden's), whom she described as a friend's "bugger butler", and obtained a British passport. The marriage ended shortly thereafter, but Sybille took her husband's surname, publishing all of her later work as Sybille Bedford.