esley Blanch is probably best known now for her 1954 book , which told the stories of four European women who left home in variously adventurous ways to live in the Middle East. As an assiduous self-mythologiser habitually costumed in veils, kaftans and clanking bracelets, Blanch was drawn to the fanciful and the extreme. She told the stories of her own life many times but like all good storytellers had no particular truck with accuracy, preferring what she called (characteristically) the ‘lifegiving oasis’ of escapism.
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