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.
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.