LESLEY BLANCH: “What does it mean to be a great romantic? To live it as well as write about it”
Best known for The Wilder Shores of Love, Lesley Blanch was a scholarly romantic and a bold writer with a lifelong passion for Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East.
ON THE WILDER SHORES OF LOVE, A Bohemian Life — Lesley Blanch
Edited & with an Introduction by Georgia de Chamberet
WATERSTONES flagship store, Piccadilly, London: “It’s a wonderful read and deserves its place in our Valentine’s window”
AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW: “A flamboyant and iconic writer who mixed travel memoir, scholarship and romance in a passionate, heady cocktail”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Deliciously readable”
ANNE SEBBA: “I’ve been fascinated by Lesley Blanch, her work and her seductive talent ever since I can remember . . . A marvellous book, it captures her spirit and fills in the gaps . . . I can’t think of a better guide to an amazing woman”
FAR TO GO AND MANY TO LOVE, People and Places — Selected Writings of Lesley Blanch
Edited & with an Introduction by Georgia de Chamberet
JOHN URE, COUNTRY LIFE: “This new collection of her early journalism, biographical essays and traveller’s tales adds a whole new dimension to [Lesley Blanch’s] adventurous and romantic life . . . In this eccentric and fascinating book, she also discovers ‘the wilder shores of shopping’, and is as good company on the page as she must have been in the alleyways of Bukhara.”
JOURNEY INTO THE MIND’S EYE, Fragments of an Autobiography — Lesley Blanch
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “The stuff that dreams are made of”
HARVARD REVIEW: “This book is a jewel: the prose is immaculate, the delineation of the human heart is unclouded by sentiment . . . The perceptions of a fine writer, all cast upon a gorgeous Russian canvas”
ROMAIN, A Private View — Lesley Blanch
Lesley Blanch’s personal recollections of her husband, Romain Gary, and their time together from 1944 to 1963. Diplomat and novelist, he won the Prix Goncourt twice (forbidden by its statues), as Romain Gary in 1956 and under the pseudonym Emile Ajar in 1975.
Included in her memoirs ON THE WILDER SHORES OF LOVE, A Bohemian Life published by Virago (2015) & La Table Ronde (2018) under the title CROQUIS D’UNE VIE DE BOHÈME.
GAVIN LAMBERT [in a letter to Lesley Blanch dated 22/2/03]: “I wanted to tell you how extraordinary I found Romain, un regard particuler. It made clear for the first time a lot of things that often puzzled me about Romain, the personal contradictions, the way he could seem alternately remote and longing for contact, sometimes arrogant and sometimes very vulnerable and puzzled. It’s such an affectionate portrait, yet full of sharp and sometimes disturbing insights. It was also such a pleasure to read a new book by you, and to hear your voice so unmistakeably”
Biography & Memoir. Actes Sud, 1998 PB 170 pages.
Originally published in France, translated from the original English by Jean Lambert.
Retranslated by Lucien d’Azay for inclusion in her memoirs published posthumously under the title, CROQUIS D’UNE VIE DE BOHÈME