Anne Edwards is the author of several bestselling biographies of notable figures, including film stars Judy Garland, Vivien Leigh, and Katharine Hepburn, as well as Queen Mary and Gone with the Wind novelist Margaret Mitchell. A fastidious researcher and accomplished writer, Edwards received a Pulitzer prize nomination for her book Early Reagan: The Rise of an American Hero.
In this new memoir, Edwards turns the spotlight on herself, chronicling her 20-year exile from the United States from the 1950s until the early 1970s. After working for MGM as a junior writer, Edwards sold two original screenplays and was employed as a story editor on a television program. An attack of polio left her physically compromised and struggling to make ends meet, so the divorced mother of two left her homeland to find work in Europe. After arriving in London, she was able to find writing jobs under an assumed name, along with her expatriated colleagues.
Leaving Home is a personal story about a young mother and her two small children, but it is also about the many famous—and not so famous—people whose lives intertwined with theirs: Judy Garland, John Garfield, Rod Serling, Norman Mailer, Greta Garbo, and several others. This is an intimate story of a woman who refused to be subdued by her circumstances and determined to rebuild her life in the wake of McCarthyism. It is also a story about a woman who found and lost love and will appeal to any readers wanting to learn more about Hollywood history during one of its darkest periods.
About Anne Edwards
Anne Edwards has written screenplays, novels, and children’s books. She is the author of several bestselling biographies, including Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, Judy Garland: A Biography, and Early Reagan: The Rise of an American Hero.
“Leaving Home: A Hollywood Blacklisted Writer’s Years Abroad” by Anne Edwards
The Washington Post Book Review – August 17, 2012 (Excerpt)
Unlike the uncountable young people who fill the bookstores now with memoirs of lives that haven’t yet been lived, Anne Edwards has earned the right to tell her story. She will turn 85 Monday, and she can look back on a life filled with hard work, interesting travel and occasional adventures (many of them of the amatory variety), in addition to which she can browse a large shelf filled with her own books. These, to be sure, are almost entirely ephemeral celebrity-biographies — her subjects have included Vivian Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Princess Diana, Maria Callas and Margaret Mitchell — and all but a handful are out of print, a fate shared by all eight of her novels. If “Leaving Home” is her effort to make one last plea for the public’s attention, well, she’s entitled.
Back in the day when I was still writing a weekday review for this newspaper’s Style section, I took it upon myself to consider a couple of her many books. It was a decidedly mixed experience. The first of these, “The Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell” (1983), I found notable for its “meticulous” and “sensitive” treatment of the difficult and in many ways unhappy life of the author of “Gone With the Wind.” But in the second, “A Remarkable Woman: The Life of Katharine Hepburn” (1985), there was precious little to praise: “Edwards’ blend of gossip and deference in . . . personal matters makes for a lumpy pudding,” and she “is curiously silent about her sources.” [Read the full article...]
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DOODLEBUGS & SPITFIRES
Memories and Short Stories by Peter Carroll
“Doodlebugs & Spitfires” is a delightful collection of memories and short stories written by Peter Carroll, the author of “Queen of Misfortune,” in his trademark poetic and profoundly thoughtful style.
Most of his stories, previously published in limited form in local English newspapers and magazines, like “Brave New World”, “The Forties Street Tradesmen”, “Doodlebugs”, or “The Christmas of 43” evolve around his childhood in the Northern part of London during and after World War II. He describes the horrors that came with the V1 flying bombs, nicknamed the “Doodlebugs.” Heroic British pilots in their “Spitfire” airplanes would attempt to divert the flying bombs from the populated areas, sometimes successful, and sometimes not.
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