Search results for ""author judith mackrell""

'They were not just reporters; they were also pioneers, and Judith Mackrell has done them proud.' –SpectatorGoing with the Boys follows six intrepid women as their lives and careers intertwined on the front lines of the Second World War.Martha Gellhorn got the scoop on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, transformed herself from ‘society girl columnist’ to combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth was the first English journalist to break the news of the war, while Helen Kirkpatrick was the first woman to report from an Allied war zone to be granted equal privileges to her male colleagues.Barred from official briefings and from combat zones, their lives made deliberately difficult by entrenched prejudice, all six set up their own informal contacts and found their own pockets of war action. In this gripping, intimate and nuanced account, Judith Mackrell celebrates these extraordinary women and reveals how they wrote history as it was being made, changing the face of war reporting forever.'This is a book that manages to be thoughtful and edge-of-your-seat thrilling.' – Mail on Sunday 'Like the copy filed by her subjects, it is an essential read.' – BBC History Magazine

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Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned and the project was abandoned with only one storey complete. Empty, unfinished, and in a gradual state of decay, the building was considered an eyesore. Yet in the early 20th century the Unfinished Palazzo’s quality of fairytale abandonment, and its potential for transformation, were to attract and inspire three fascinating women at key moments in their lives: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim. Each chose the Palazzo Venier as the stage on which to build her own world of art and imagination, surrounded by an amazing supporting cast, from d’Annunzio and Nijinsky, via Noel Coward and Cecil Beaton, to Yoko Ono. Luisa turned her home into an aesthete’s fantasy where she hosted parties as extravagant and decadent as Renaissance court operas – spending small fortunes on her own costumes in her quest to become a ‘living work of art’ and muse to the artists of the late belle époque and early modernist eras. Doris strove to make her mark in London and Venice during the glamorous, hedonistic interwar years, hosting film stars and royalty at glittering parties. In the postwar years, Peggy turned the Palazzo into a model of modernist simplicity that served as a home for her exquisite collection of modern art that today draws tourists and art-lovers from around the world. Mackrell tells each life story vividly in turn, weaving an intricate history of these legendary characters and the Unfinished Palazzo that they all at different times called home.

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Abandoned unfinished and left to rot on Venice’s Grand Canal, ‘il palazzo non finito’ was once an unloved guest among the aristocrats of Venetian architecture. Yet in the 20th century it played host to three passionate and unconventional women who would take the city by storm. The staggeringly wealthy Marchesa Luisa Casati made her new home a belle epoque aesthete’s fantasy and herself a living work of art; notorious British socialite Doris Castlerosse (née Delevingne) welcomed film stars and royalty to glittering parties between the wars; and American heiress Peggy Guggenheim amassed an exquisite collection of modern art, which today draws visitors from around the world. Each in turn used the Unfinished Palazzo as a stage on which to re-fashion her life, with a dazzling supporting cast ranging from D’Annunzio and Nijinsky, through Noël Coward, Winston Churchill and Cecil Beaton, to Yoko Ono. Individually sensational and collectively remarkable, these stories of modern Venice tell us much about the ways women chose to live in the 20th century.

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'Mackrell's enthralling biography restores Lydia Lopokova to her rightful position centre-stage' DAILY MAIL'Superb ... Mackrell, with her insider's knowledge of ballet and theatre, lovingly recreates Lydia's many worlds' GAY & LESBIAN REVIEW'A hugely entertaining and informative study of the Ballets Russes star' SPECTATORBorn in 1891 in St Petersburg, Lydia Lopokova lived a long and remarkable life. Her vivacious personality and the sheer force of her charm propelled her to the top of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. Through a combination of luck, determination and talent, Lydia became a star in Paris, a vaudeville favourite in America, the toast of Britain and then married the world-renowned economist, and formerly homosexual, John Maynard Keynes.Lydia's story links ballet and the Bloomsbury group, war, revolution and the economic policies of the super-powers. She was an immensely captivating, eccentric and irreverent personality: a bolter, a true bohemian and, eventually, an utterly devoted wife.

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