Figure of Eight

(Born into a landed and banking family of Anglo-Irish Ascendancy people her main love was reckless riding to hounds across the Galway fields. She was presented at Court in 1931 and did the debutante's London Season. She married a wealthy young man and they went off on wide and then very unusual travels, in which they visited places which would now either be totally spoiled by development or tourism (Tahiti) or ruined by decolonialization, war and banditry (West, East and Central Africa). Not long after returning from this long trip, her son (left in Ireland) died and eventually she remarried, to Claud Cockburn, often then and since termed a Soviet agent, whose anti-fascism she shared, though her political views are not explored deeply in this book. After WW2, the family lived in Ireland and endured several upsets, including Cockburn being named 84th worst Communist in the world by Senator McCarthy; two sons contracted polio, while Cockburn senior suffered from tuberculosis. More positively, Cockburn's novel, Beat The Devil was a bestseller and later filmed starring Bogart and directed by John Huston)