After the war, Bedford spent a year travelling in Mexico. Her experiences on that trip would form the basis of her first published book, a travelogue entitled "The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey", which was published in 1953. Bedford spent the remainder of the 1940s living in France and Italy. During this time she had a love affair with an American woman, Evelyn W. Gendel, who left her husband for Bedford and became a writer and editor herself. In the 1950s Bedford became Martha Gellhorn's confidante.