Described by one biographer as 'the most voluptuous queen in Europe' she distinguished herself during the First World War when she publicly opposed the peace agreement between Romania and Germany. She was also a gifted writer, and in the mid-1930s, publication of three volumes of her memoirs, The Story of My Life, brought her worldwide renown. Yet, until now, her story has remained incomplete. This recently discovered last memoir of Queen Marie reveals through her own eyes those last chapters of her life. The granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Marie was brought up at Eastwell Park in Kent. Glamorous and beautiful, she had men falling at her feet, yet at the age of seventeen she married the shy Crown Prince of Romania. It was a step that was to propel her on to the stage of international politics, and see her venture upon unofficial diplomatic missions, earning her the title of an 'irresistible ambassador'.Her last memoir, written from the period following the First World War until the end of 1922, includes both the trivia and intimate details of her daily life, and also brings us alongside her as she witnesses world-changing events. From the 1919 Peace Conference - at which Queen Marie met Clemenceau, Poincare, Woodrow Wilson and Hoover - to her last meeting with her mother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg; and from her informal visits to Paris, London and Transylvania to the first parliament of Greater Romania, the memoir gives insight into the life of this extraordinary queen.

    

    Molly Hughes writes of her suburban London Victorian family in the 1870s. In this first book she describes her happy childhood, growing up with her 4 brothers. She describes outings in London and holidays with her mother's family in Cornwall. Hughes notes details when describing people, places and things that make the story come alive. The foreward by Adam Gopnik tells the real, not so happy, story of what happened to her family.

    On its first publication, W. H. Auden found the book ‘as exciting as a detective story’ and, as Milner searches out clues, the reader quickly becomes involved in the chase. Using her own personal diaries, kept over many years, she analyses moments of everyday life and discovers ways of being, of looking, of moving, that bring surprising joy – ways which can be embraced by anyone.With a new introduction by Rachel Bowlby this classic remains a great adventure in thinking and living and will be essential reading for all those interested in reflecting on the nature of their own happiness – whether readers from a literary, an artistic, a historical, an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background.