Molly Izzard

Molly Izzard ( Crutchleigh-Fitzpatrick; 1 August 1919 – 4 February 2004) was an English writer. She was the co-author of the book Smelling The Breezes, published in 1959, about a camping trek she and her family took in the High Lebanon mountains. Izzard subsequently wrote A Private Life in 1963 on her private life at work. In 1969, she authored A Life of Dame Helen Gwynne Vaughan and The Gulf: Arabian Western Approaches on Middle Eastern events ten years later. Izzard's final work was a controversial biography of the explorer Freya Stark, published in 1993.

Early life On 1 August 1919, Izzard was born Molly Crutchleigh-Fitzpatrick, in Cornwall, England. Her father was of Anglo-Indian stock, and exited Calcutta to work on a British Guiana sugar plantation. Following the separation of her parents,

She attended convents in Cherbourg and Darjeeling. and was republished as A Walk in the Mountains in the United States the following year. The book Izzard wrote was about the two-month camping trek she and her family took through the High Lebanon mountains by donkey in 1957. When the Murray family reviewed the manuscript, they asked Izzard to make alterations to it, since it depicted Stark, also a John Murray author, in a negative light. Izzard refused to make any changes whatsoever. The book was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1993 and was received negatively by enthusiasts of Stark. It got mixed comments from reviewers.

Personal life

She married Ralph Izzard, a Daily Mail Middle East correspondent, circa 1948 in Delhi until he died in 1992. They had four children. On 4 February 2004, Izzard died in Royal Tunbridge Wells in England.

Legacy

The correspondent for The Times wrote of Izzard, "[she] had an enquiring mind, and her five books, on very different topics, were notable for their candour and the perceptiveness of her observations." The Guardian writer Veronica Horwell said the writer was one of the sharpest of a foreign correspondent's wife who was experienced in public affairs and knew of constructing "daily connections with the realities of a place."