Liz Jones – Everything Is Better With Dragons

18 MARCH 2021
Market: Biography
Paperback
ISBN:9781912905119
Price: £9.99

Blurb

The first biography of the bestselling author and journalist Marguerite Jervis.
Daughter of an officer of the Indian Medical Corps, Marguerite Florence Laura Jarvis (1886 – 1964) was born in Burma and became one of the most successful novelists of her time. During the course of her 60-year career, Marguerite published over 150 books, with 11 novels adapted for film, including The Pleasure Garden (1925), the directorial debut of Alfred Hitchcock. In her heyday she sold hundreds of thousands of novels, but is now largely forgotten; under numerous pseudonyms she wrote for newspapers, women’s magazines and the silent movie screen; she married one of Wales most controversial literary figures, Caradoc Evans. She also trained as an actress and was a theatrical impresario. Known variously as Mrs Caradoc Evans, Oliver Sandys, Countess Barcynska and many other pseudonyms, who was she really?

Liz Jones has dug deep beneath the tale told in Marguerite Jervis’s own
somewhat romanticised memoir to reveal what made this driven and
determined woman. And what turned her from a spoilt child of the English
middle classes to a workaholic who could turn her hand to any literary
endeavour and who became a runaway popular success during the most
turbulent years of the 20th century.

4th July 2013

Simon & Schuster UK

Liz Jones is Fashion Editor at the Daily Mail and a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, having worked in the media for the last 30+ years.

Born in 1958 the youngest of seven children to an ex-army captain and a housewife, Liz Jones grew up in a variety of places around Essex wearing handmade and hand me down clothes, but dreaming of working for Vogue. She never quite managed it. Anorexic at 11 and still obsessed with food, having it all and losing it all because she never felt good enough, Ms Jones has considered herself a failure from a young age and has striven to be better.

I think I’ve occasionally read her column, for the simple reason that when I’m at my grandparents flat and I haven’t anything with me to read, it’s the only vaguely honest and interesting piece I can find in the paper. This autobiography is the same; the writing is fluid and moving. I read it in a single sitting.

One review described the book as ‘laugh out loud funny’. I disagree; it’s sad, with odd moments that are funny in hindsight, but must have been embarrassing or painful at the time. A vivid example of how a strong work ethic and success can mask low self-esteem, this is a powerful story.

Rose