Rachel Trethewey – författare

In February 1918, when the First World War was still being bitterly fought, prominent society member Lady Northcliffe conceived an idea to help raise funds for the British Red Cross.Using her husband’s newspapers, The Times and the Daily Mail, she ran a campaign to collect enough pearls to create a necklace, intending to raffle the piece to raise money. The campaign captured the public’s imagination. Over the next nine months nearly 4,000 pearls poured in from around the world. Pearls were donated in tribute to lost brothers, husbands and sons, and groups of women came together to contribute one pearl on behalf of their communities. Those donated ranged from priceless heirlooms –one had survived the sinking of the Titanic – to imperfect yet treasured trinkets.Working with Christie’s and the International Fundraising Committee of the British Red Cross, author Rachel Trethewey expertly weaves the touching story of a generation of women who gave what they had to aid the war effort and commemorate their losses.In this new, updated edition, the last string of Red Cross pearls is revealed for the first time and the story behind their discovery told.

Wallis Simpson is known as the woman who stole the king’s heart and rocked the monarchy – but she was not Edward VIII’s first or only love. This book is about the women he adored before Wallis dominated his life. There was Rosemary Leveson-Gower, the girl he wanted to marry and who would have been the perfect match for a future king; and the Prince’s long-term mistress, Freda Dudley Ward, who exerted a pull almost equal to Wallis over her lover, but abided by the rules of the game and never expected to marry him. Then there was Thelma Furness, his twice-married American lover, who enjoyed a domestic life with him, but realised it could not last forever and demanded nothing more than to be his mistress – and fatefully introduced him to Wallis. In each love affair, Edward behaved like a cross between a little boy lost and a spoilt child craving affection, resorting to emotional blackmail to keep his lovers with him. Each of the three women in this book could have changed the course of history. By examining their lives and impact on the heir to the throne, we question whether he ever really wanted to be king.

‘These three portraits beautifully capture the variety and complexity of mother–daughter relationships.’ - The LadyVirginia Woolf, Agatha Christie and Sylvia Plath are three of our most famous authors. This book tells in full the story of the remarkable mothers who shaped them.Julia Stephen, Clara Miller and Aurelia Plath were fascinating women in their own rights, and their relationships with their daughters were exceptional; they profoundly influenced the writers’ lives, literature and attitude to feminism. Too often in the past Virginia, Agatha and Sylvia have been defined by their lovers – Mothers of the Mind redresses the balance by charting the complex, often contradictory, bond between mother and daughter.Drawing on sources from archives around the world and accounts from family and friends of the women, this book offers a fresh perspective on these iconic authors.

‘Winston’s daughters Diana, Sarah and Mary witnessed some of history’s most defining moments … Now it’s time for their stories to be heard.’ – The Mail on SundayBright, attractive and well-connected, in any other family the Churchill sisters – Diana, Sarah, Marigold and Mary – would have shone. But they were not in any other family, they were Churchills and neither they nor anyone else could ever forget it.From their father – ‘the greatest Englishman’ – to their brother, golden boy Randolph, to their eccentric and exciting cousins, the Mitford Girls, they were surrounded by a clan of larger-than-life characters which often saw them overlooked. Marigold died when she was very young but her three sisters lived lives full of passion, drama and tragedy …Diana, intense and diffident; Sarah, glamorous and stubborn; Mary, dependable yet determined – each so different but each imbued with a sense of responsibility toward each other and their country. Far from being cosseted debutantes, these women were eyewitnesses at some of the most important events in world history, including at the Second World War Conferences of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. Yet The Churchill Girls is not a story set on the battlefields or in Parliament; it is an intimate saga that sheds light on the complex dynamics of family set against the backdrop of the tumultuous twentieth century.Accomplished biographer Rachel Trethewey draws on unpublished family letters from the Churchill archives to bring Winston and Clementine’s daughters out of the shadows and tell their remarkable stories for the first time.

‘[A] clear-eyed portrait of the woman whose lot it was to be the mother of the rebellious Mitford daughters’ – Daily Mail (Book of the Week)‘Intriguing and informative’ – Nicky Haslam, The Oldie‘Rachel Trethewey has done the seemingly impossible in a book about the Mitfords: she has found something original to say, thanks to her excellent scholarship, and has written Muv’s story exceptionally well.’ – Simon Heffer, author of Sing As We Go: Britain Between the WarsNancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, Deborah: these are the flamboyant Mitford Girls, the Bright Young Things who defined their era. The trials, tribulations and outrageous escapades of these six controversial sisters continue to fascinate us. Yet what about the seventh and arguably most vital Mitford woman of them all – their mother?Sydney Redesdale, known as ‘Muv’, is often portrayed as different from her daughters – outside of that exclusive girl gang. Without doubt, she was a divisive character, her daughters squabbling about the ‘real Muv’ for even longer than they argued about their political differences. They could never agree: was she a scapegoat or saint, mother or manager? Even later biographers couldn’t quite pin her down: just who was this elusive woman who nurtured such colourful children?How could these exceptional daughters have sprung from such apparently ordinary parents? In reality, Sydney was far from ‘ordinary’: she was the original Mitford girl, from whom much of her daughters’ legendary strong will, self-confidence and extremism was born. Set against the backdrop of a country and a family divided, the story of her life – one of eccentricity, tragedy and resilience – is told here in full for the first time.