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Books

Lesley Blanch: a true original on the wilder shores of exoticism

Lesley Blanch was incapable of writing a bad or boring sentence, says Philip Ziegler, reviewing On the Wilder Shores of Love

28 March 2015

9:00 AM

28 March 2015

9:00 AM

Lesley Blanch: On the Wilder Shores of Love edited by Georgia de Chamberet

Virago, pp.464, £20

Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four upper-class European ladies who abandoned their natural habitat to seek and find romance in the Middle East. If one had to pick only one of Blanch’s books to read there could be no better choice than this; but, as this exotic potpourri reminds one, she was incapable of writing boringly or badly.

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