Communiqué de Presse | LA TABLE RONDE 19-04-2018 | Croquis d’une vie de bohème, Lesley Blanch

lesley blanch la table ronde edition 2018CROQUIS D’UNE VIE DE BOHÈME | Lesley Blanch

Préfacé et présenté par Georgia de Chamberet | Traduit de l’anglais par Lucien d’Azay

Écrivain et voyageuse, fascinée par l’Orient, Lesley Blanch est restée célèbre en Angleterre pour Vers les rives sauvages de l’amour, un quartet biographique où elle raconte la vie d’aventurières extravagantes, à son image. Après une enfance dans une famille bourgeoise de Londres à l’époque édouardienne, cette Anglaise spirituelle et raffinée mena une vie passablement nomade; elle était décoratrice de théâtre et rédactrice de l’édition britannique de Vogue quand elle épousa Romain Gary pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. La carrière diplomatique de celui-ci les conduisit à Paris, à Sofia, à New York, en Bolivie et enfin à Hollywood où Lesley Blanch côtoya quantité de stars et travailla avec George Cukor.

Continue reading Communiqué de Presse | LA TABLE RONDE 19-04-2018 | Croquis d’une vie de bohème, Lesley Blanch

Media Release | Lesley Blanch & the 1950s Woman | Waterstones, Gower Street, London W1

Georgia de Chamberet & Elisa Segrave celebrate the 1950s Woman

Wednesday 5th July, 6.30 pm Waterstones, Gower Street, London W1 @gowerst_books @quartetbooks

Join us for a glass of wine to toast the publication of Far To Go and Many To Love: People and Places by Lesley Blanch — the sequel to her posthumous memoirs, On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life, published by Virago (2015).

Tickets include wine and are redeemable against books purchased.

SPECTATOR Lesley Blanch was incapable of writing boringly or badly
Continue reading Media Release | Lesley Blanch & the 1950s Woman | Waterstones, Gower Street, London W1

Lesley Blanch Archive | Seaworthy and Semi-seagoing, British Vogue, 1943

Lesley Blanch was Features Editor of British Vogue 1937-45. During the Second World War, she was on the front line of women journalists covering a wide range of topics, and documented the lives of women in the forces with her friend the photographer Lee Miller.

This is the story of The Women ― today, as Clare Boothe Luce never imagined them yesterday. An all-star, all-women cast, it’s true, but there the resemblance ceases. These women are playing their parts in a world drama, but they remain limelight dodgers. And the scene is no demi-paradise of beauty parlours but the wild hills and lochs of Western Scotland.

Here, in pitching little boats, cutting through the mists and gales, on the big depot ship, swarming up and down plunging rope ladders, balanced, cat-like, to walk along the perilous jutting booms, picked Wrens undergo their boats-crew training. Or work as visual signallers, or service the torpedoes and depth charges aboard the motor torpedo boats and corvettes in the clanging uproar and grime of the Naval bases. One and all disprove the old wives’ or rather the old-fashioned husbands’ tale that woman’s place is the home, that women can’t get on together.

Continue reading Lesley Blanch Archive | Seaworthy and Semi-seagoing, British Vogue, 1943

Media Release | Joe Boyd: White bicycles #OnWilderShores

Joe Boyd, the record and film producer, whose memoir White Bicycles: Making Music in the Sixties has sold 75,000 copies worldwide, interviewed the late Lesley Blanch for The Guardian in 2005. They shared a love of Bulgarian gypsy music.

He and a panel of guests will discuss The Wilder Shores of Love, Lesley Blanch’s “cult book which pioneered a new approach to history writing,” on BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read, 31 March at 4.30pm.

Here is Joe on YouTube talking about Amoeba Music and some of his favourite albums from the sixties.

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