Sir Harold Alexander, later 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis 1891–1969 Churchill’s favourite general, perhaps because he was always able to dance among the skulls. A long-time family friend of the Leslies, he told Anita in Italy, before she embarked for France: ‘Don’t falter, Anita.’ She didn’t.
Agnes Bernelle 1923–99 Fled Berlin for London in 1936 and, aged fifteen, worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) involved in black propaganda, under the code name Vicki. Became an actress and cabaret singer. Married Desmond Leslie 1945. Divorced 1969. Subsequently became very successful, singing with Marc Almond, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and The Radiators. Author of The Fun Palace (1996), in which she gives laconic descriptions of Anita’s wartime ‘beaux’.
Rose Burgh (née Vincent) 1915–81 The most important person in Anita’s life from their debutante days until Rose, long divorced from Lord Burgh and a second husband, disappeared en route to join her third husband and small daughter in the Bahamas. Anita said Rose was the only person she could tell the truth to and Anita’s life story is reconstructed in the almost daily letters she wrote to this rich, beautiful, much-married woman, who flitted to and from a series of luxury chateaux and villas in various countries and eventually became a drug addict. Rose’s letters to Anita, if they ever existed, haven’t survived.
Jennie Churchill 1854–1921 Daughter of Leonard Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill. Said by Lord d’Abernon to have ‘more of the Panther than the woman in her look’. Anita’s great-aunt and the subject of her biography, Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill (1969), in which the smouldering panther is declawed and softened to disarming effect. This fascinating woman has been the subject of several biographies, all of them more revealing but less charming than Anita’s.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 1874–1965 A very original portrait of her first cousin once removed emerges from Anita’s wartime memoirs. Until he became prime minister in May 1940, he was disregarded by many members of his family, who dismissed his warnings of the threat posed by fascism – after he became prime minister his relations asked for various favours. Yet he always showed tolerance towards them, even to his cousin Clare Sheridan, whose idiotic goings-on were a constant embarrassment. Anita, who had flirted with fascism before the war, redeemed herself by providing a link between Winston and the war on the ground in a series of enlivening and intelligent letters.
Commander William (Bill) King 1910–2012 Put in charge of his first submarine aged twenty-nine at the outbreak of the Second World War, the only person to command a British submarine on the first and last days of the war. Exceptionally brave – he was awarded seven medals during the war – he was also exceptionally modest. He first met Anita in 1943 in the Lebanon and became what he called ‘her number 4 admirer’, languishing behind her husband, Paul Rodzianko, who had followed her to the Middle East, Philip Parbury, whom Anita loved and Peter Wilson, who loved her. He finally became number one admirer and married Anita at Glaslough on 1 January 1949. After retiring from the navy he competed in round-the-world yacht races until late in middle age.
Anne Theodosia (Anita) Leslie 1914–85 When she became a successful writer of witty, entertaining and rather fluffy biographies of her Leslie, Churchill and Jerome relations, the audiences at her annual us lecture tours described her as ‘a grand old girl’. They had no idea that she was a war heroine, twice awarded the Croix de Guerre, a survivor of offhand and unkind parenting, scarred by an abysmal first marriage and tormented by financial worries. Anita was less emotionally robust than she pretended to be, something that is revealed in her letters and diaries but not in her insouciant memoirs.
Desmond Leslie 1921–2001 Youngest son of Shane and Marjorie Leslie. Spitfire pilot in the Second World War but invalided out in 1943 on account of a damaged heart. Pioneer of electronic music, novelist, ufo enthusiast. Cast down by the difficulties of running the Castle Leslie estate, as was his father Shane. Married Agnes Bernelle in 1945 and, after a complicated divorce, Helen Strong in 1970.
Sir John Randolph (Shane) Leslie 3rd Baronet 1885–1971 Catholic convert, supporter of Irish nationalism, philanderer, fulminating critic of James Joyce, whose work, he thought, should be banned from every decent Catholic household. Reluctantly took over the management of the family estate when his son Jack wasn’t able to run it. Married Marjorie Ide in 1912 and after Marjorie’s death in 1951, Iris Carola Lang in 1958. Although rather flaunting his nationalist leanings by wearing an Irish kilt on most occasions, he joined the Home Guard in London in 1939 and stayed there throughout the Blitz.
Sir John (Jack) Leslie 4th Baronet 1916–2016 Older son of Shane and Marjorie. Joined the Irish Guards at the outbreak of war, was taken prisoner in May 1940 and spent the rest of the war in Bavaria. Released in May 1945, awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 2015. After the war he lived in Italy before returning to Glaslough in his old age. When Sammy Leslie took over the running of Castle Leslie, successfully turning it into a luxury hotel, Jack became a popular tour guide and an indefatigable patron of the local nightclubs.
Colonel Philip Parbury 1910–88 Born in Australia where he returned after the war. He married Eileen Sybil Phipps in 1948 after having been engaged to her and Anita at the same time. His bravery during the war – he was mentioned in despatches and awarded the dso in 1947 – is at odds with his bewildering, dishonest and despicable behaviour after it, which, at one point, involved him faking a broken leg.
Colonel Paul Rodzianko cmg 1880–1965 Ukrainian landowner and soldier until dispossessed after the 1917 Russian Revolution. During the First World War he’d been an officer in the Tsar’s Imperial Guard and had been married to Tamara Novosiloff, a maid of honour to the Russian empress, and may possibly have had a second wife too. In 1928 he was the instructor of the Irish Equitation School and seems to have first met Anita in 1934. Her grandmother, Leonie Leslie, called Paul ‘the nhb’ – the noisy, hungry bore. Knowing that she was making a catastrophic mistake, Anita married him in 1937 and joined the mtc in order to escape him; not a very successful ploy since he managed to follow her to South Africa and the Middle East, only thwarted when she was sent to Italy. He denied Anita a divorce for many years but she was finally granted one in 1948. He subsequently married Joan Freeman Mitford, widow of Guillermo de Udy.
Clare Sheridan 1885–1970 Tempestuous doesn’t begin to describe Anita’s sculptor cousin, daughter of the dodgy financier Moreton Frewen, nicknamed ‘Mortal Ruin’, who was married to Jennie Churchill’s sister Clara. Although Anita in her biography Cousin Clare (1976) depicts King Milan of Serbia as Clara’s devoted admirer, he was probably Clare’s father. Anita also bathes Clare’s short-lived marriage to Wilfred Sheridan, who was lost in battle in 1915, in a rosy light. Clare herself, in her memoir Nuda Veritas (1927), writes that she realized early in her marriage that Wilfred didn’t approve of her becoming a sculptor or indeed working at all while she herself thought that work was the most satisfying thing in life and children the least. Her lovers included Charlie Chaplin, Lord Birkenhead and Lev Kamenev, Trotsky’s son-in-law and a high-ranking Soviet functionary, a list that reads like the characters in a Tom Stoppard play.
Colonel Peter Wilson 1894–1975 Of all the Mr Wrongs with whom Anita was involved, Peter was probably the most misbegotten. They met in 1943, and, although Peter loved Anita devotedly for many years, he also wanted to control her life, including persuading her into unwanted pregnancies that couldn’t be sustained. Their post-war life at Oranmore Castle was fraught but in 1949 he gave her the greatest gift she could imagine: her son Tarka, although due to the complications which were always part of Anita‘s life, his birth and parentage had to be kept secret. It’s extraordinary that Anita and Peter’s relationship survived so much bruising, but it did. He died, married to someone else, near to where Anita lived in Oranmore, in a house which she had chosen for him.