Zanna Gringrich is so exotic and vividly beautiful that she seems to make the world spin faster. Her armoury consists of lavender eyes, marmalade hair, and 'a Ritz mind'. With her beauty comes irreverence and defiance- on the road to becoming a famous society milliner, she doesn't hesitate to hail her discovery of a new shade of navy blue as though it were a cure for cancer - or so her neglected daughter, Aurora, claims. As the post-war years of austerity give way to boom, Zanna furnishes her Bond Street salon with silk sofas and ceramic tigers and gives her sublime hats names like 'Giddy Heaven' and 'Song for the Head'. Lacking any sense of guilt, Zanna blithely cheats on Jewish family life in Golders Green for the sake of her larger-than-life politician lover. As well as offering stolen Soho afternoons, this liaison brings her slap-bang against socialist ideals. So Zanna Gringrich does her bit towards equality of opportunity by designing a department-store range of millinery that allows typists to dress like debutantes. In the meantime, her love affair forces her into a fatal connection with the stately Shropshire pile of Utley Manor. Here, the same winds of change that

Impossible Things

Perrick, Penny

Literature & Fiction

Corgi

Anita Leslie (1914-85), best known for the popular biographies of her extraordinary relatives, including Jennie Churchill (Winston's mother) and sculptor Clare Sheridan, was also a most unlikely war heroine. In 1940 Anita volunteered for active service, and by the end of the war she had been awarded the Croix de Guerre for outstanding bravery on the battlefield in France.
While Anita always insisted that everything was "delightful and amusing," her life after the war was clouded by destructive love affairs, depression, and domestic and financial chaos.
This revealing biography describes the complex character behind the sunny facade she was at pains to project. Drawing on copious correspondence, Penny Perrick brings to life Anita's true anguished self: the intense joy she took in her children, her passionate love of Ireland, her career as a writer and the dramatic family squabbling that resulted from the muddled management of the Castle Leslie. Telling Tales is a scintillating and poignant account of this flamboyant woman.

Telling Tales: The Fabulous Lives of Anita Leslie

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Bloomsbury Caravel

Arts & Literature

The Lilliput Press

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Books by Perrick, Penny