Get up to 65% off some of our top titles. Shop now |
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Elisabeth Luard
|
by Elisabeth Luard
|
by Elisabeth Luard
|
Classic Spanish Cooking: Recipes for Mastering the Spanish Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard |
In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor by Patrick Leigh Fermor |
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Synopsis
Triumph and tragedy, happiness and despair, joy and sorrow - through love and death and life lived to the full with a man who loved both alcohol and other women - for food-writer Elisabeth Luard, marriage to writer and sometime king of satire Nicholas Luard was never going to be easy. 'If a man can be judged by the company he keeps, so can a wife. It includes: Private Eye; Beyond the Fringe; Peter Cook; Lenny Bruce; Ken Tynan; Christine Keeler; Jack Profumo; The Rolling Stones; The Clermont Club; Johnny Lucan; and Jimmy Goldsmith...Nicholas, the man to whom I was married for forty years, was always ahead of the game. I started real life as a wife - but that's not how it ends.'In 1962 and just turned twenty-one, Elizabeth married Nicholas Luard, novelist, travel-writer and co-founder of Private Eye. Within six years, she had had four children and had moved to a remote valley in southern Spain - an adventure featured in her first autobiography, "Family Life". "My Life"...continues the story, telling of a forty-year marriage and the people and places which brought both sunshine and shadow.From her childhood in South America to the private gaming tables of Monte Carlo to a rebellious year as a debutante to bringing up a family in the wilds of Andalusia to a prizewinning career as a cookery-writer to the death of a beloved daughter from Aids to the grim days of her husband's liver-transplant through to the final reckoning - when a man who attracted success as easily as disaster refused to accept the consequences of what couldn't be changed.Yet this is a story of laughter and hope as well sadness - the healing power of children, the comfort of the kitchen table, the simple joy of making life work. "Family Life - Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing" was only the start of the story - this is the rest.
From the Inside Flap
They met in the back offices of Private Eye. He was the proprietor, the man the press called the Emperor of Satire, who every girl in London wanted to date. She was the reluctant debutante, an art student, and the office typist. Their affair was secret, and passionate, and days at the office were followed by nights in her Pimlico flat. When things got tricky, she swapped London for Mexico. He followed and proposed. She was just twenty-one when they married.
Luard's fascinating, witty and often brave memoir charts forty years of marriage to a man who was as cavalier and unreliable as he was charismatic and charming. Good-looking and athletic, with a keen intelligence and a deep understanding of and love for women, Nicholas Luard was also an absentee father, a philanderer, a wheeler-dealer whose numerous harebrained business schemes usually lost rather than made money, and ultimately a man whose love of the bottle was all-consuming. But while life with Nicholas was never going to be easy, it was also never going to be dull.
In My Life as a Wife, award-winning writer Elisabeth Luard tells the story of her life with this hugely glamorous and extraordinary maverick of a man. She traces their years spent together in London, Spain, France, the Hebrides and Wales, with four children, one of whom died tragically from AIDS. It is a journey littered with numerous eccentric friends and innumerable escapades, often staying just ahead of the bank, through to the grim days of her husband's terrifying descent into alcoholism and insanity, his liver transplant and ultimately his death.
Yet this is a story of laughter and hope as well as sadness - the healing power of children, the comfort of the kitchen table, the delight of good food and the simple joy of making life work - written by a woman of spirit.
Luard's fascinating, witty and often brave memoir charts forty years of marriage to a man who was as cavalier and unreliable as he was charismatic and charming. Good-looking and athletic, with a keen intelligence and a deep understanding of and love for women, Nicholas Luard was also an absentee father, a philanderer, a wheeler-dealer whose numerous harebrained business schemes usually lost rather than made money, and ultimately a man whose love of the bottle was all-consuming. But while life with Nicholas was never going to be easy, it was also never going to be dull.
In My Life as a Wife, award-winning writer Elisabeth Luard tells the story of her life with this hugely glamorous and extraordinary maverick of a man. She traces their years spent together in London, Spain, France, the Hebrides and Wales, with four children, one of whom died tragically from AIDS. It is a journey littered with numerous eccentric friends and innumerable escapades, often staying just ahead of the bank, through to the grim days of her husband's terrifying descent into alcoholism and insanity, his liver transplant and ultimately his death.
Yet this is a story of laughter and hope as well as sadness - the healing power of children, the comfort of the kitchen table, the delight of good food and the simple joy of making life work - written by a woman of spirit.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
78% buy the item featured on this page: My Life as a Wife: Love, Liquor and What to Do About the Other Women £11.25 |
 |
11% buy Family Life: Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing |
 |
8% buy European Peasant Cookery £9.73 |
 |
2% buy Food of Spain and Portugal: A Regional Celebration £9.74 |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
 |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
