Edna Healey PART OF THE PATTERN Signed Hardback
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Edna Healey PART OF THE PATTERN Signed Hardback
First edition, second print hardback of PART OF THE PATTERN: Memoirs of a Wife at Westminster, by Edna Healey. Published by Headline Review/ Headline Book Publishing, London, in 2006. Signed and inscribed by Edna Healey on the title page.The book is in very good condition (Clean dark blue cloth boards with gilt lettering on the spine) with minor wear to the pictorial dust jacket, which is not price clipped (light creasing to the edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Edna Healey was born in the Forest of Dean and read English at Oxford. While studying English at St Hugh's College she met Denis Healey, who was studying at Balliol College. She then trained as a teacher and married Healey in 1945 after his military service in World War II. She became Baroness Healey in 1992 when her husband received a life peerage.
Though she began her writing career relatively late in life, her books were critically acclaimed and sometimes best-sellers. She wrote non-fiction books, often biographies of successful women in powerful positions.
These are: Lady Unknown, the Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts (1978), about Mary Livingstone, Jenny Marx and Emma Darwin Wives of Fame(1986), Coutts and Co (1992), The Queen's House: A History of Buckingham Palace (1997), Emma Darwin (2001) and Lady Healey's memoirs Part of the Pattern (2006). Lady Healey also made two award-winning television documentaries Mrs Livingstone, I Presume (1982) and One More River, the Life of Mary Slessor in Nigeria (1984).
She was elected in 1993 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died on 21 July 2010, aged 92.
"Edna Healey has been married to Denis Healey for sixty years and has seen parliamentary life, both in power and opposition, from the inside. An accomplished historian and film-maker, Edna forged her own career as a writer, lecturer and broadcaster while her husband rose steadily through the Labour ranks to become Secretary of State for Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer in successive governments.
After the fall of the Callaghan government came Denis's dramatic fight for the leadership of the party which he lost to Michael Foot - a turning point in his career about which Edna has trenchant points to make. At Denis's side, she was constantly in touch with the rhythm of politics and saw as much as anyone its labyrinthine workings and damaging divisions. Edna travelled the globe with her husband, meeting many of the world's leaders from Premier Chou En-Iai to Prime Minister and Mrs. Khrushchev.
She has known all the Labour Prime Ministers from Attlee to Blair and writes about them with great insight and candour. She also records the lives of some for whom there is no memorial and whose lives should not be 'writ in water'. She retains strong links with her birthplace in the Forest of Dean and the engagingly evocative chapters on her early life and its lasting influence make moving reading. This is not a political autobiography but the telling memoir of someone who moved in influential circles and knew many of the people responsible for shaping our world in the post-war period."
'A profoundly touching account of an exceptional marriage' - SUNDAY TIMES
'A conscientious work, the fruit of much labour' - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Charming, not self-serving at all, and will be of service to the future historians of the 20th century' - SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY
'A fond and entertaining look at a rich life and a happy marriage' - THE HERALD
'Filled with good stories' - SATURDAY TELEGRAPH
'Edna Healey's lovely, wry autobiography' - Maureen Lipman reviewing the Radio 4 reading
'An evocative account' - THE SPECTATOR
306 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs.
ISBN: 0 7472 7580 7
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Edna Healey PART OF THE PATTERN Signed Hardback