Book description
When, on the night of their wedding, Ned asks his new wife Rose to
promise that she will never leave him, Rose is quick to give her
aristocratic husband her word: keeping it, however, proves harder.
For even on the day when she has promised to forsake all others,
Rose's heart is with the true love of her life, Mylo, the penniless
but passionate Frenchman who, within five minutes of their meeting
declared his love and asked her to marry him.
Whilst Rose remains true to her promise never to leave Ned, not even
the war, social conventions, nor the prying of her overly inquisitive
and cheerfully immoral neighbours, can stop her and Mylo from meeting
and loving one another.
Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her
to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the
War Office. Although she initially fulfilled her parents' expectations
in marrying an aristocrat she then scandalised them when she divorced
him in 1945 and moved in with the great love of her life, Eric
Siepmann. The couple married in 1952, once his wife had finally been
persuaded to divorce him.
She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested
development, getting my first novel Jumping the Queue published
at the age of seventy'. She went on to write a further nine novels,
three of which were adapted for television, including the best-selling
The Camomile Lawn. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the
1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.
