Another Way of Life - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0953593703 ISBN 13: 9780953593705

Synopsis

Life story follow-up book by Royal Portrait Artist Lydia de Burgh.

About this title

From the Author

Insight into a way of life which vanished at the end of WW2.
I am perhaps best known for my portraits of H.M. the Queen and other members of the Royal Family and I am still the only resident Irish artist to have done so from personal sittings. I am also well known for my portraits of people from all walks of life, as well as my landscapes and paintings of African wildlife.

My autobiography "Lydia’s Story", published late in 1991, was so successful that many people wrote asking me to write more. In "Another Way of Life" I have now done so. This is less about my own life and more about a way of life that really vanished for most people with the last war. The customs, places, and people so prominent in my youth and childhood, especially in Ireland, have nearly all vanished for ever. They were kindly, charming and worked hard for the community.

My new book is an insight into their more personal lives, their jokes and sorrows, which would otherwise be unknown to future biographers. It is also a delightful account of the countries like Thailand, India and South Africa which I know and love. My painter’s eye for detail helped to bring their beauty and interest vividly to life before they were hit by mass tourism.

As the daughter of a distinguished Naval Officer whose family traces its Irish ancestry back to the 12th century, and is still well known in Ireland, I travelled a great deal as a child and had lived in Kent, Malta, France, Dorset, Dumfriesshire and Co. Durham before I was eighteen as well as in Ireland. At eighteen in 1942 I worked as a Wren on the famous Enigma code-breaking bombes at Station X, Bletchley until my health broke down.

Since then, painting, lectures and exhibitions have taken me all over the world and my professional and social life has caused me to cross paths with Royalty, the aristocracy and top media figures as well as those less well endowed and sometimes very poor indeed.

I now live in a small village in County Down, Northern Ireland where I continue to paint and live life as fully as my arthritis will allow.

Lydia de Burgh

Edition details

• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0953593703
• ISBN 13: 9780953593705
• Binding: Paperback