The First Lady of Fleet Street: The Life of Rachel Beer: Crusading Heiress and Newspaper Pioneer

Yehuda Koren

History

Bantam]

<p>A 14 year-old Andrew Lloyd Webber chanced upon the painting of the Flaming June. He was a budding collector and his hobby was financed by his grandmother, who had just shelled out 50 pounds for three huge, beautifully-illustrated volumes of Dugdale's History of Ancient Abbies and Monasteries. The boy described in detail the painting he fell in love with, but his grandmother was adamant: 'I will not have Victorian junk in my flat'. This comes near the opening of the real story of Ada Pullen (Dorothy Dene) who became the favourite model of Lord Leighton who was President of the Royal Academy. This book tells the story of Ada's life, success and celebrity - and of the painting itself. Lloyd Webber's grandma was wrong. The current value of the painting is 14 million pounds.</p>

Flaming Dene

Biographies & Memoirs

Eilat Negev

Arts & Literature

Psychology News Press Ltd

<p>'Assia was my true wife, and the best friend I ever had', wrote Ted Hughes, after his lover surrendered her life and that of their young daughter in 1969, six years after Sylvia Plath had suffered a similiar fate. Diva, she-devil, enchantress, muse, Lillith, Jezebel - Assia inspired many epithets during her life. The tragic story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been related from one of two points of view: hers or his. Missing for over four decades had been a third: that of Hughes's mistress. This first biography of Assia Wevill views afresh the Plath-Hughes relationship and at the same time, recounts the journey that shaped her life. Wevill's is a complex story, formed as it is by the pull of often contrary forces.</p>

A Lover of Unreason: The Biography of Assia Wevill

Robson Books

Rachel Beer was both a rebel and a pioneer. In the late 19th century, at a time when women were still denied the vote, she became the first woman ever to edit a national British newspaper - in fact two, The Sunday Times and the Observer. It was to be over eighty years before another woman took the helm of a Fleet Street paper. As a woman she was barred not only from frequenting the London Clubs that fed her rival male editors with political gossip, but also from the Press Gallery of the House of Commons. However, whilst other female journalists were restricted to frocks, frills and frippery, Rachel managed to raise her formidable voice on national and foreign political issues - including the notorious Dreyfus Affair - as well as on social and women's issues, often controversially. Aunt of the poet Siegfried, Rachel's family, the Sassoons, had made their fortune in Indian opium and cotton. Her marriage to Frederick Beer brought together two wealthy dynasties. It was also to bring Rachel strife and heartbreak - for while the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, attended the wedding, Frederick's father's decision to abandon the Jewish religion and baptize his son led to Rachel being disowned by many of her proudly Jewish family. Rachel anticipated her family's rage, but ultimately followed her heart, only for tragedy to strike when her beloved husband died and her family conspired to have her certified. Drawing on a wealth of original material, First Lady of Fleet Street paints a vivid picture of a remarkable woman and of the times in which she lived. It also provides an important history of two venerable Jewish families, their origins and their rise to eminence.

First Lady of Fleet Street: The Life, Fortune and Tragedy of Rachel Beer

Jr Books Ltd

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Books by Yehuda Koren