WILD MARY: THE LIFE OF MARY WESLEY

"Mary Wesley published her first novel in 1983 when she was seventy years old - and went on to write nine bestsellers, including The Camomile Lawn, which was made into a TV series." "Wesley was a pen name, derived from the family name of Wellesley. She was born Mary Farmar, related to the Duke of Wellington, and grew up a rebel who believed that she was her mother's least favourite child. Like many girls of her background, she married for escape. She herself summarised the pre-War years as 'God! When I think of the time I've wasted going to bed with old Etonians.' Her first marriage (to Lord Swinfen) was brief and conventional. In the late 1930s, she began a fascination with Heinz Ziegler, a Czech university professor and wartime air gunner; his brother, Paul, later a Benedictine monk, also fell under her spell. In 1944, she met her adored second husband, Eric Siepmann, a writer who never managed to make any money at all from writing. Their marriage, which was mercurial and bohemian, lasted until his death. In her later years she enjoyed a relationship with playwright Robert Bolt." "At the outbreak of the Second World War she was, as she put it, 'roped into Intelligence', where she