Doodlebugs and Threesomes

Razor-sharp mind, filthy mouth, fabulous writer.

What's not to love?

About 15 years ago I was working in magazine publishing in London, an industry and time period not noted for its enlightenment. The token girl, I was also I was the freak who occasionally eschewed lunchtime pub sessions to go to the Royal Academy or fossick about on Charing Cross Road for old books. Pub conversation generally meandered along the lines of who was sleeping with whom and how pissed you'd got with the Saatchi's guy at lunch at L'Escargot. So it surprised and delighted me to join the chaps one day and discover them raving about The Camomile Lawn, which was being serialised on telly. Written by Mary Wesley, who had her first book published at the great age of seventy, it's one of my favourites. Read it. Better yet, get the DVD and see why some boys with expense accounts were glued to it. You'll get the gorgeous Jennifer Ehle, in wartime London, using a Bakelite phone naked in the bath, smoking her head off.

The author, rather surprisingly for one of her ilk, was a most unconventional lady. Related to the Duke of Wellington, she married first to Lord Swinfen, who bored her silly. The war was her liberation. She worked for MI5, breaking codes and having a great series of glorious love affairs, at one time with two brothers, and putting two manicured fingers up at convention. The theme of death's imminence as a sexual liberator runs through many of her novels, as does the idea of taking twins to bed. Years before Hugh Heffner made it trendy. Her lovers were usually intelligent and foreign - she told her biographer 'God! When I think of the time I've wasted going to bed with old Etonians.' In 1944 she married her adored Eric Siepmann and they lived in bohemian poverty until he died. She then finally got published, filling her lucky readers' lives with colourful, caustic characters. Her deep love of London, Cornwall and Devon winds through her tales of those who choose less ordinary lives.

Mary was as tough as old boots and drop-dead elegant. She was also a very private lady; she was interviewed for the Telegraph and decided she rather liked the young journalist, agreeing for him to write her biography on the understanding it would only be published after her death. It is a cracking read: scandal, illegitimacy, betrayal, family feuds. Her books are great - just the ticket for anyone stumped for Christmas present ideas for a slightly sulky fifteen year old girl. Save the DVD for a bloke who has yet to grow into his £1500 suit.