Telling Tales: The Fabulous Lives of Anita Leslie

by Penny Perrick

Overview

The poignant biography of Anita Leslie, only woman to have been awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Africa Star in World War II.

Anita Leslie (1914-85), best known for popular biographies of her relatives including Jennie Churchill, Winston's mother, was also an unlikely war heroine.

In 1940, Anita volunteered as an ambulance driver. By the end of the war, she was the only woman to have been awarded both the Africa Star and the Croix de Guerre, alongside the other medals for her service across all four fronts of WWII, as recounted in her remarkable memoir Train to Nowhere.

In this revealing biography, Penny Perrick brings Anita to life: her complicated early years, her love for her children, her passion for Ireland, her career as a writer, and the ongoing family drama about Castle Leslie. Telling Tales is a scintillating and poignant account of this flamboyant woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448217229
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/12/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Penny Perrick, who lived for many years in the west of Ireland, was a fashion editor for Vogue, a columnist on The Sun and The Times and a fiction editor for The Sunday Times. She is also a novelist and the author of Something to Hide, a biography of the poet Sheila Wingfield. Penny lives in London.
Penny Perrick, who lived for many years in the west of Ireland, was a fashion editor for Vogue, a columnist on The Sun and The Times and a fiction editor for The Sunday Times. She is also a novelist and the author of Something to Hide, a biography of the poet Sheila Wingfield. Penny lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Putting on a Show
2. An Education
3. The Devil's Decade
4. Married to the North Wind
5. Things Fall Apart
6. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
7. Sunburn Is So Unbecoming
8. Laughter Among the Skulls
9. A Cobweb of Affection
10. The Woods Are Full of Germans
11. The War Heroine
12. The Unbearable Peace
13. The Burden of the Day
14. Charades at Castle Leslie
15. 'He Enchants My Every Moment'
16. A Sea Change
17. Complicated Chronicles
18. They All Talk Amusingly
19. Invented Lives
20. Jolly Old Age I'm Having
21. This Leslie Half-World
22. The Low-Down on the High-Ups
23. Deaths and Entrances
24. No Chance of a Warm Light Room
25. The War Revisited
26. Specialists in Survival
27. Back Where She Belonged

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Dramatis Personae
Anita's Houses
Index

Editorial Reviews

A fascinating look at the life of an aristocratic war hero with a dark side” —Irish Sunday Times

“Perrick's spellbinding Telling Tales: The Fabulous Lives of Anita Leslie portrays her subject's shortcomings, but also her qualities” —The Tablet

“Her determination in sometimes grim circumstances to paint the world in sunshine showed the same kind of nonchalant heroism as her “startling achievements” during the war” —Irish Times

From the Publisher