Darling Pol: Letters of Mary Wesley and Eric Siepmann 1944-1967

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'They met by chance in the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel on the evening of 26 October 1944. By the time she eventually caught the train back to Penzance two days later they had fallen in love and Eric had declared that he was determined to marry hera'

Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham before her death in 2002 that 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring'. Eric Siepmann was her second husband and their correspondence -- lively, intimate, passionate, frustrated -- charted their life together (and apart) with unusual candour and spirit.

Marnham suggests that through these letters Mary, who famously blossomed as a novelist in her seventies, a decade after Eric's death, found her voice. Bequeathed to Marnham in two size 5 shoe boxes, this is one of the great surviving post-war correspondences.'They met by chance in the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel on the evening of 26 October 1944. By the time she eventually caught the train back to Penzance two days later they had fallen in love and Eric had declared that he was determined to marry hera'

Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham before her death in 2002 that 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring'. Eric Siepmann was her second husband and their correspondence -- lively, intimate, passionate, frustrated -- charted their life together (and apart) with unusual candour and spirit.

Marnham suggests that through these letters Mary, who famously blossomed as a novelist in her seventies, a decade after Eric's death, found her voice. Bequeathed to Marnham in two size 5 shoe boxes, this is one of the great surviving post-war correspondences.
Mary Wesley (Author)
Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. She also worked part-time in the antiques trade. Mary Wesley lived in London, France, Italy, Germany and several places in the West Country. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel published at the age of seventy'. That first novel, Jumping the Queue, was followed by a subsequent nine bestsellers- The Camomile Lawn, Second Fiddle, Harnessing Peacocks, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, Not That Sort of Girl, A Sensible Life, A Dubious Legacy, An Imaginative Experience and Part of the Furniture. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.

Patrick Marnham (Edited by)
Patrick Marnham was born in Jerusalem, educated at Oxford and is a member of the English Bar. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling Wild Mary, has been translated into seven languages and has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize, the Marsh Biography Award, and been nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award. He has been literary editor of The Spectator, was the first Paris correspondent of the Independent, and has worked as a BBC scriptwriter and broadcaster and as a special correspondent and war reporter.