On screen and in her books and magazines, Martha presented a quintessentially American image of domestic bliss. Blonde and pretty, she radiated cheerful can-do energy. And it seems appropriate to call her by her first name because her readers and viewers – count me in – felt as though we knew her, given that so much of her work focused on her homes, showcasing her kitchen, her renovation projects, her garden. She was like a capable friend who always had great advice on what to serve at a dinner party, how to decorate a child’s bedroom and what to plant in that problematic pocket of the garden.

But while Martha became a shining media star, she also divided people. She’s long been a lightning rod, sparking devotion and antagonism. In her view, as she explained to US TV host Charlie Rose in 1999, on the night her company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, “I was serving a desire ... to elevate the job of homemaker.” Martha’s belief was that what had traditionally been regarded as women’s work was undervalued. It was worthwhile, creative and rewarding, and it could be nourishing and beautiful, to the person who created it and for those around her. To quote from her famed sign-off, “It’s a good thing.”

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In Martha’s world, there was always more to do: more jams and pies to make, more tables to decorate, more vegetables to plant. However, her critics saw her as creating a tastefully gilded cage for her followers, a honey trap with the home as an insatiable maw, the site of never-ending tasks and standards that were impossible to achieve.

And, perhaps inevitably, along with spectacular success powered by all that sunny energy came revelations of a darker side: of a demanding, even bullying boss prone to angry outbursts and intolerant of what she saw as slackness or imperfection. Cutler captures this aspect in a couple of succinctly telling scenes. In one, she scolds an assistant for using the wrong knife to cut an orange, judging their work to be thoughtless and inefficient. In another, she objects to the inclusion of a teacup in her homewares line as the handle doesn’t comfortably allow sufficient space for fingers. She grumpily notes that it wouldn’t have got through quality control if she had been running the show. In both cases, she’s impatient, irritated and probably right.

Martha’s story is fascinating. A pioneer whose frontier was the domestic space. America’s first female self-made billionaire. A corporate colossus who suffered an ignominious fall from grace and was perhaps targeted precisely because she stood out so sharply from the largely male pack around her.

Cutler conveys all of this in his profile, and whatever objections Martha might have, it’s compelling viewing.

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