journalism - Lesley Blanch

November 18, 2023November 18, 2023

Feature Lesley Blanch Ack-Ack A.T.S. & others, Jan 1942

As Features Editor of British Vogue 1937-45 during the Second World War, Lesley Blanch was on the front line of women journalists covering a wide range of topics with the aim of raising the morale of women. Ack-Ack A.T.S. & others is the second of three special features written by Lesley Blanch documenting the lives of women in the forces, originally accompanied by the photos of her friend the photographer Lee Miller.

The scene is a wild stretch of coast. There are mountains inland, glimpsed nebulously through the icy, blanketing mists which lie low over the ragged, sodden fields. The cold appals. The most leathery-looking sergeant shudders. I am huddled inside a wigwam of topcoats. Stamping and shuffling in their battledress, the A.T.S. are blowing on their hands, waiting for the command to take over the gunsites.

November 11, 2023November 18, 2023

Feature Lesley Blanch W.R.N.S. on the Job, Nov 1941

As Features Editor of British Vogue 1937-45 during the Second World War, Lesley Blanch was on the front line of women journalists covering a wide range of topics with the aim of raising the morale of women.

For Remembrance weekend, held to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars, W.R.N.S. on the Job is the first of three special features written by Lesley Blanch documenting the lives of women in the forces, originally accompanied by the photos of her friend the photographer Lee Miller.

It is an indisputable fact that occupations and professions breed their own particular type. There are occupational faces, as there are occupational diseases, except in the case of the bored, spoiled, overfed idler, now fortunately rarely seen, save at luxurious hotels in ‘safe’ areas, where the face, and its accompanying malaise, might be described as non-occupational.

November 17, 2020November 9, 2023

Feature Lesley Blanch, Film Orientations, August 1945

After leaving British Vogue in 1945, Lesley Blanch freelanced for a year, and was a regular contributor to Edward Hulton’s The Leader (sister publication to Picture Post). She covered film and photography – still relatively new media – and profiled rising stars; Vivien Leigh, Peter Ustinov and Billy Wilder among them. A fellow contributor and friend, Robbie Lantz, later became her agent when they were both living and working in the US. He also took on her husband Romain Gary as a client. Film Orientations is the first in a series of feature articles by Lesley Blanch being republished that originally appeared in 1945.

Since I wrote some weeks back, on the manner in which one nation presents another on the screen, so many people have written asking my views on Western versions of the East, that I shall go into the question more fully, here and now.