Book description
You may not be beautiful, clever and rich, buy you can still change
your life by using the long-lost art of charm. This book holds the
secrets to serenity and elegance. Miss Ascroft will teach you:
how to banish graceless habits
how to dress to compliment your personality type
how to run for the bus like a young gazelle
how to make friends and be the perfect hostess
how to appear well-educated and well-read
how to decorate your home to suit your complexion
Her fourteen charm lessons build up a whole way of life for you so
that you may become more attractive, more desirable, and at the same
time a more complete and contented person. Her advice is proffered in
a delightful fashion, accompanied by exquisite photographs, and no
woman who reads this book can fail to gain something from its pages.
Eileen Ascroft was born in 1914 in Reading. first husband was
celebrated film-maker, Alexander Mackendrick and they had one son. She
spent a lifetime in journalism including a period at the Daily
Mirror where she met her second husband, Hugh Cudlipp. They
married in 1945. In her book about Cudlipp, Newspapermen, Ruth
Dudley Edwards describes Eileen as 'blonde, talented and ambitious'.
After being sacked from the MIrror for using the Director's
office door as a dartboard during a party she went on to start the
women's page at the Evening Standard and she and Hugh became
the most powerful couple on Fleet Street. In 1959 she gave up her
career as a regular writer in the press to assume responsibility for
the promotion and control of the large magazine empire of the Mirror Group.
Interestingly, for a successful journalist carving out a glittering
career for herself in a traditionally masculine industry Eileen's
book, The Magic Key to Charm, is a tutorial in all the
traditional feminine virtues. Her obituary in the Times also
stated that 'Another side of her talents was seen as navigator of her
husband's motor-cruiser in Cross-Channel expeditions. She could also
pilot an aeroplane, having learnt to do so in an idle spell in
Australia.' The Magic Key to Charm was published in 1938 and
was made up of a collection of her immensely popular columns in the
Mirror, 'Charm School'. Tragically, in 1962, Eileen Ascroft
died of an overdose of sleeping pills.
