Lesley Blanch: Inner Landscapes, Wilder Shores
Anne Boston
Lesley Blanch: Inner Landscapes, Wilder Shores
Lesley Blanch was an artist to her fingertips, a writer, a traveller, a bohemian: a talented illustrator who became Vogue’s maverick arts correspondent and a fine film writer. Her first book, The Wilder Shores of Love, became a worldwide bestseller and opened up a new field of historical travel writing. From a young age she had a great passion for Russia, inspired by her childhood adoration and first love for the Traveller, a mysterious Russian friend of her parents. Later she found the ‘eternal Slav’ in Romain Gary, Franco-Slav diplomat and writer, and with him embarked on a turbulent life of postings from Bulgaria to Los Angeles. After their divorce she transferred her obsession to Turkey, Persia and the Islamic East where she travelled widely, with tremendous baggage. In this biography, Anne Boston draws on publishers’ archives, unpublished journals and conversations with those who knew her, to piece together, for the first time, the tumultuous life of a free spirit for whom ‘character plus opportunity equals fortune’.
3.7 out of 5 based on 5 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Biography, Literary Studies & Criticism |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
416 |
| RRP |
£25.00 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-0719560378 |
| Publisher |
John Murray |
| |
Lesley Blanch was an artist to her fingertips, a writer, a traveller, a bohemian: a talented illustrator who became Vogue’s maverick arts correspondent and a fine film writer. Her first book, The Wilder Shores of Love, became a worldwide bestseller and opened up a new field of historical travel writing. From a young age she had a great passion for Russia, inspired by her childhood adoration and first love for the Traveller, a mysterious Russian friend of her parents. Later she found the ‘eternal Slav’ in Romain Gary, Franco-Slav diplomat and writer, and with him embarked on a turbulent life of postings from Bulgaria to Los Angeles. After their divorce she transferred her obsession to Turkey, Persia and the Islamic East where she travelled widely, with tremendous baggage. In this biography, Anne Boston draws on publishers’ archives, unpublished journals and conversations with those who knew her, to piece together, for the first time, the tumultuous life of a free spirit for whom ‘character plus opportunity equals fortune’.
Reviews
The Guardian
Miranda Seymour
"Boston's book is not perfect. We didn't need a long chapter on Gary's life after he left Blanch. The language can become a bit hectic (taking a bath, Gary is "saturated in his imagination", rather than water). But trivial flaws are considerably outweighed by the book's pleasures. Boston has succeeded, quite remarkably well, in capturing the spirit and wit of a sexy and scholarly romantic, a woman who could summon up images of Herodias's beautiful daughter ("always confronted by a reproachful head on a platter"), even while cooking up cods' heads for her cats."
08/03/2010
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The Literary Review
Pamela Norris
"Energetic and suggestive, Boston's biography invites many questions… Such uncertainties are just what Blanch would have relished. 'Leave him to his myths,' she said to biographers, eager to probe the truth about Romain Gary."
08/03/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Jane Shilling
"...admirers of Blanch’s particular mystique – a steely survival instinct artfully veiled in a colourful nimbus of idiosyncratic fantasy – need not fear a debunking exercise. Boston’s affectionate and admiring biography supplies some of the detail about which her subject was notably vague, but leaves the Blanch legend largely intact."
08/03/2010
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The Sunday Times
Lynn Barber
"Bolton asked for permission to write this biography, but Blanch refused and told her friends not to co-operate — she never wanted to let daylight into magic. No doubt there will be an authorised biography at some point, but meanwhile Bolton proves a sure-footed and sympathetic guide through the labyrinth of Blanch’s self-invention."
08/03/2010
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The Daily Express
Deirdre Vine
"Blanch is biographical silk, the material is seductive but hard to pin down. Caught in the shadows between fact and myth are intriguing questions: did she give birth and then give away a daughter? Did the Traveller really exist or was he a figment of her romantic imagination? Did she actually only visit Russia once? Boston casts a beady eye over all the evidence but doesn’t have all the answers."
08/03/2010
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