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Loading... Joan: The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor (edition 2017)by Simon Fenwick
Work InformationJoan: Beauty, Rebel, Muse: The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor by Simon Fenwick
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Volumes have been written by and about Patrick Leigh Fermor, but his wife Joan is almost entirely absent from their pages. Now, Simon Fenwick, archivist of the Leigh Fermor papers, tells Joan's story in Joan: The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor.A talented photographer, Joan defied the social conventions of her times and, though she came from a wealthy and well-connected family, earned her own living. Through her lover, and later editor of the TLS, Alan Pryce-Jones, she met and mingled with the leading lights of 1930s bohemia - John Betjeman, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, Maurice Bowra (who adored her) and Osbert Lancaster, among others. She featured regularly in the gossip columns, not only for her affairs and her fashionable clothes, but for her intrepid travels to Russia and America. In 1936 she met and subsequently married the journalist John Rayner, but her belief in open marriage was not shared by her husband and their relationship foundered. Then, in 1944 in Cairo, where she was a cypher clerk, she met Paddy Leigh Fermor, lionized for his daring kidnap of the Nazi General Kreipe in Crete. They would remain together until her death in 2003.In this riveting biography, written with full access to Joan's personal archive, Simon Fenwick reveals the extraordinary life of a woman who, until now, has been defined by the man she married and their famous friends. Here, at last, Joan is placed at the centre of her own story. It is also a riveting portrait of a marriage and a milieu, revealing the sexual and intellectual mores of that wartime generation who lived life at full tilt, no matter what the consequences. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)941.082092History and Geography Europe British Isles Historical periods of British Isles 1837- Period of Victoria and House of Windsor 1901-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.33)
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Wikipedia in English
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Joan Eyres Monsell was a member of the lower aristocracy and second daughter to Viscount Monsell who in his time was an MP and First Lord of the Admiralty. Their family home was Dumbleton in Worcestershire. She grew up as most of her contemporaries did at the time, became a debutante and moved in privileged circles and mixed with the 1930s bohemian set. Even though her family were wealthy and well-connected, she differed from those around her because she earned her own living as a photographer. This was to take her America and Russia, earning her more column inches in the gossip columns.
She first came across Paddy, as he called himself, in 1944 during the Second World War when she was working as a cypher clerk in Cario, where he was lauded for his success in kidnapping General Kreipe. At this moment in time, she was still married to John Rayner, but the marriage by that point had hit the rocks. They were to fall deeply in love with each other. They travelled widely together and separately and spent a fair amount of time back in her family home of Dumbleton, but they were to put down deep roots and make their home together in a house that PLF designed in the village of Kardamyli, southern Greece. It was a place that drew others for parties, discussions, companionship and where Paddy and others were to write books that have now become classics.
It is a revealing biography of a bold and confident woman who never stood in the shadow of Leigh Fermor, but was his soul mate and closest confident until her death in 2003. Her income supported them both as he became better known as a writer and it was her inheritance that enabled them to build their dream home. Fenwick has managed to draw material from her archive to give us a sense of her character, her fears, the society that she was born into and her desire of wanting a family and to settle down with the man that she loved. Even though we know more than ever about Joan, she still manages to defy categorisation and still remains a little aura of mystique. Excellent biography of Joan Leigh Fermor, a woman no longer unknown. 4.5 stars (