Winifred Fortescue was born in Suffolk in 1888. At the age of 17 she decided to help the family's ailing resources by taking a career on the stage, and starred in a number of productions. In 1914 she married John Fortescue, the King's Librarian and Archivist, and in spite of a huge age difference theirs was an exceptionally happy marriage. The couple lost nearly all their money in the stockmarket crash of 1929. Selling what little they had left, they bought a tumbledown cottage high on a mountain outside Grasse in Provence, where they settled for life among the Provencals - with all the trials and tribulations of sulky workmen, flamboyant villagers and learning to drive Provence-style - and with all the pleasures that their new-found neighbours and way of life brought them. Lady Fortescue's account of their life in Provence, where she died in 1951, was first published in 1935.
