Bedford spent the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s living in France, Italy, Britain and Portugal, and during that period had a twenty-year relationship with the American female novelist Eda Lord. In 1979 she settled in Chelsea, London. In 1981 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She worked for PEN, was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1994 became a Companion of Literature. Bedford's final work was "Quicksands," a memoir published in 2005. A biography by Selina Hastings "Sybille Bedford: An Appetite for Life" was published in 2020.