The wild one

You can hardly blame a woman of 102 for being a bit hazy when it comes to giving directions. ‘Drive to the Italian border,’ said Lesley Blanch on the telephone, after initially attempting to discourage my visit. ‘When you get there, make a U-turn and I’m the first on the right.’ And so she was, tucked away in a house high above Menton on the French Riv- iera. ‘It is always useful to be near a frontier, in case you need to make a dash for it.’

There were countless times when she crossed frontiers that most people would have trouble finding on a map, not fleeing but restlessly searching for romance, experience and adventure. Her accounts of these journeys were unorthodox and fearless, making her one of the 20th century’s most exotic travel writers. Her bestselling book, The Wilder Shores of Love, has never been out of print since it was published in 1954, yet by the time of her death she herself had been largely forgotten. She envied her departed friends.

When I visited her last December she was smartly dressed, with a red paisley shawl elegantly draped over one shoulder and a necklace of worked silver beads. I was a bit disappointed she was not wearing one of the turbans she was so often photographed in, but was struck by her eyes, a remarkable blue, full of curiosity and sparkle. By her own admission she was never considered a beauty, but she knew how to make the most of that wide, azure gaze. Sheiks, diplomats, archdukes and total strangers in far-flung villages across Eastern Europe had all succumbed to it.

I had a way of conducting myself as if I were always among friends, being happy and relaxed. Nothing bad happened to me, even in the wildest places.