Tag: romain gary

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Lesley Blanch & Romain Gary in Sofia, Bulgaria 1946-48

Lesley Blanch, Romain Gary in Sofi

This year, 145 years of diplomatic relations between France and Bulgaria, and the centenary of the French Institute in Sofia, are being celebrated. To mark the occasion, they are holding a series of events and film screenings 21-25 October dedicated to the writer Romain Gary who began his diplomatic career in Sofia, accompanied by his first wife, the journalist and historian, Lesley Blanch. His stay in the Bulgarian capital, where he was a perceptive observer of Soviet totalitarianism, was marked by close surveillance by the intelligence services. His account of this period, recounted in La nuit sera calme, is a source of historical insight into the transformations of this Balkan country.

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Georgia de Chamberet en conversation avec Simon Bentolila de Lire Magazine (in French) Podcast

Pour célébrer la parution du livre Une femme, deux hommes Lesley Blanch, Théodore Kommissarzhevsky et Romain Gary (Ed. Herodios) à la Maison de Balzac, Paris, le Mercredi 5 Juin, Simon Bentolila de Lire Magazine a discuté avec Georgia de Chamberet de la vie et des amours de Lesley Blanch (1904-2007).

Femme libre et autonome, artiste complète et grande voyageuse, Lesley Blanch n’en était pas moins totalement dévouée aux deux hommes de sa vie, le dramaturge Théodore Kommissarzhevsky, et par la suite, l’écrivain Romain Gary, dont elle fut le première épouse.

“Il faudrait toujours chercher la femme exceptionnelle qui se cache derrière l’oeuvre d’un grand homme,” Journal de Dimanche

A BookBlast® Production | 32:24

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L’odyssée romantique de Lesley Blanch: Une Femme, Deux Hommes

une femme deux hommes lesley blanch en librairie le 5 avril 2024

Extrait de la Préface: “Indépendante et talentueuse, Lesley Blanch avait un style très particulier – chic ethnique et assez théâtral – et menait une vie de bohème. Femme autonome, elle gagnait sa vie, prenant sa carrière de journaliste et d’écrivain très au sérieux. Elle avait une faculté rare de mélanger les gens et les genres. Admirée par Louise de Vilmorin, Marianne Faithfull et Jackie Kennedy, entre autres, Lesley Blanch était une femme hors du commun, douée d’une force de caractère inépuisable. Pourtant, la femme des années cinquante était censée être subordonnée aux besoins de son mari et de sa famille ; hors de son foyer, elle signifiait peu dans la société. Là réside le paradoxe : Lesley Blanch se tenait aux côtés de son homme ; elle le soutenait et l’encourageait. Leurs relations amoureuses et professionnelles étaient intimement liées.

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Shusha Guppy interviews Lesley Blanch (1991) part 5

Christmas card sent to friends by Lesley Blanch. Hollywood & Paris, 1961

Shusha Guppy interviewed Lesley Blanch at her home in Garavan, before and after a delicious home-cooked lunch consumed in the shade of a fig tree in the garden. September 1988.

Shusha Guppy : It is interesting that your husband was the opposite: he only wrote fiction, and won the Goncourt twice, the second time under a pseudonym. What do you think of his work now?

Lesley Blanch : I don’t read novels. Few last. Romain was not a disciplined writer, but he had wonderful ideas, and sometimes wrote wonderful stories. The one about the strolling players, for example. I thought The Roots of Heaven was fine. It had a momentous theme, like his autobiography, Promise at Dawn, which he wrote in Hollywood and gave me to read in instalments as he went along. Of course he invented a certain amount of that, but basically it was true.

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Shusha Guppy interviews Lesley Blanch (1991) part 3

Shusha Guppy interviewed Lesley Blanch at her home in Garavan, before and after a delicious home-cooked lunch consumed in the shade of a fig tree in the garden. September 1988.

Shusha Guppy : When you left England in 1946 after your marriage, you were en poste in Bulgaria for two years, I think. And later you wrote Under a Lilac Bleeding Star, which is a Bulgarian saying, isn’t it?

Lesley Blanch : Yes. There they say that a compulsive traveller is “born under a lilac bleeding star.” I have travelled all my life, so it fits. Of course that meant leaving my husband often you might say far too often. He had other women of course, all men do. They are so proud of their . . . aptitudes!

SG: What about you? As a very attractive, and they say, sexy woman, you must have had lots of offers on your travels?

LB : Naturally. And I liked having adventures in far away, wild countries. Everywhere I travelled I collected lots of friends, and yes, I did have lovers too.

SG : You went to Bulgaria after the war, when the country was in turmoil. Were you happy there?

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