Lesley Blanch

Lesley Blanch (6 June 19047 May 2007) was a British writer and traveller. She is best known for The Wilder Shores of Love, about Isabel Burton (who married the Arabist and explorer Richard), Jane Digby el-Mezrab (Lady Ellenborough, the society beauty who ended up living in the Syrian desert with a Bedouin chieftain), Aimée du Buc de Rivéry (a French convent woman captured by pirates and sent to the Sultan's harem in Istanbul), and Isabelle Eberhardt (a Swiss linguist who felt most comfortable in boy's clothes and lived among the Arabs in the Sahara).

Life and career Blanch was born in Chiswick, on 6 June 1904.

Gary left her for American actress Jean Seberg.

Blanch's love of Russia, instilled in her by a friend of her parents whom she simply called The Traveller, is recounted in Journey into the Mind's Eye, Fragments of an Autobiography (1968, reissued 2018) which is part travel book, part love story. As well as awakening her to sex, he whetted her appetite with exotic tales of Siberia and Central Asia. The Traveller was possibly identified as Theodore Komisarjevsky.

Her trip to Iran and meeting Empress Farah Pahlavi in April 1975 resulted in a biography of the empress named "Farah, Shahbanou of Iran" in 1978.

Lesley Blanch considered her best book to be The Sabres of Paradise (the biography of Imam Shamyl and history of Tsarist Russian rule in early 19th century Georgia and the Caucasus).

Awards and honours A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Lesley Blanch was appointed MBE in 2001, and in 2004 the French government awarded her the medal of Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Death Blanch died in Menton, on 7 May 2007, aged 102.

Publications 1954: The Wilder Shores of Love, London: John Murray. 1955: Round the World in 80 Dishes: The World Through the Kitchen Window (cookbook), London: John Murray. 1957: The Game of Hearts: Harriette Wilson and her Memoirs (edited and introduced by Lesley Blanch), London: Gryphon Books. 1960: The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus (a biography of Imam Shamyl and history of Tsarist Russian rule in early 19th century Georgia and the Caucasus), London: John Murray. 1963: Under a Lilac-Bleeding Star: Travels and Travellers, London: John Murray. 1964: Harriette Wilson's Memoirs (selected and edited by Lesley Blanch), London: Folio Society. 1965: The Nine Tiger Man: A Tale of Low Behaviour in High Places, London: Collins. 1968: Journey into the Mind's Eye: Fragments of an Autobiography, London: Collins. 1974: Pavilions of the Heart: The Four Walls of Love, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1978: Farah, Shahbanou of Iran, Queen of Persia, London: Collins. 1983: Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist, London: Collins. 1989: From Wilder Shores: The Tables of My Travels (a collection of travel and food writings), London: John Murray. 1998: Romain, un regard particulier (traduit de l'anglais par Jean Lambert), Arles: Actes Sud. 2015: On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life (edited by Georgia de Chamberet), London: Virago.