Janey and Me: Growing up with my Mother - Hardcover

Ironside, Virginia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841157503 ISBN 13: 9781841157504

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2003

Synopsis

Is it every woman’s fate to turn into her mother? This is renowned writer and journalist Virginia Ironside’s poignant and blackly funny memoir of life with fashion professor and media icon Janey Ironside, for whom, even years after her death, Virginia continues to be mistaken.

Stylish, beautiful and self-loathing, Janey Ironside was to lead a cultural revolution. In 1956 she became Professor of Fashion at the Royal College of Art, then an extraordinary appointment for a young mother. Discovering and promoting designers like Ossie Clark and Bill Gibb, she changed the way people dressed around the world and herself became a fashion icon. Yet the qualities that made her great – wit, talent and drive – did not bring happiness to either her or her family.

Having grown up in colonial India, Janey suffered a painful childhood separation from her parents. She married dashing artist Christopher Ironside, but eking out wartime rations ill-suited a woman whose idea of divine punishment was 'to spend eternity washing up.' Dress-making soon filled the void, while her daughter Virginia endured a string of au pairs, embarrassing outfits and acute loneliness.

As Virginia fought to be her own person, plunging into the swing of the 'sixties as a rock journalist, she was caught between a father she adored and a mother bent on self-destruction. Now a renowned writer, she has drawn a startling portrait of a gifted woman in a time of extraordinary change. Blackly comic, beautifully written and deeply moving, JANEY AND ME reflects the universal struggle to emerge from our parents' shadow.

About this title

About the Author

Virginia Ironside has been a journalist ever since her first book came out in 1964, when she was 20. Since then she has written over ten more books and, for the last thirty years, been an agony aunt for Woman, the Sunday Mirror and, now, the Independent. She has one son and lives in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1841157503
• ISBN 13: 9781841157504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320