Les Parisiennes, a chronicle based on interviews, diaries and letters, recounts the experience of Parisian women who lived, loved and died in the city in the 1940s during the Nazi Occupation and its aftermath. The tension between resistance and collaboration is explored through the stories of women from all walks of life. Being Paris, even in the darkest moments, fashion and style were seen as acts of defiance.
Anne Sebba is a historian who has written nine books of non-fiction, mostly biographies of iconic women including Mother Teresa, Jennie Churchill and Wallis Simpson as well as a history of women reporters. She started her working life as a foreign correspondent for Reuters and before that worked in the BBC World Service. She is an accredited Nadfas lecturer, frequent broadcaster and journalist and is a former Chair of Britain’s 9,000 Society of Authors. |
The Reform Club was founded in 1836, in Pall Mall, in the centre of what is often called London's Clubland. The founders commissioned a leading architect of the day, Charles Barry, to build an imposing and palatial clubhouse. It is as splendid today as when it opened in 1841. Membership was restricted to those who pledged support for the Great Reform Act of 1832, and the many MPs and Whig peers among the early members developed the Club as the political headquarters of the Liberal Party.
The Reform Club is no longer associated with any particular political party, and now serves a purely social function. And today's Reformers are men and women drawn from many backgrounds and a wide field of professional life. |