Mary Wesley, CBE - Author

Portrait and interview - 1994 

Mary Wesley, a British novelist of Anglo-Irish descent, was born near Windsor in 1912.  On her mother’s side she was descended from the Wellesley who was the Duke of Wellingtons elder brother.  This ancestor was Governor General of India.  When looking for a pen name, she first chose Wellesley, and then, as the family had earlier been known, Wesley.

Mary’s education took her to the London School of Economics and during the war, she worked in the War Office studying the decoded transcripts of German broadcasts.  She has also worked part-time in the antique trade.  Mary has lived in London, France, Italy, Germany and several places in the West Country.  Now living in Totnes, she is at work on her latest novel.  Mary has previously written for children and her first novel, Jumping the Queue, was published by Macmillan in 1983, to wide critical acclaim.  It was translated in twelve countries. 

In 1937, at the age of twenty-three, she married Lord Swinfen, whose father had been Master of the Rolls.  As Lady Swinfen, she attended the coronation of George VI which she remembers as being ‘wonderful theatre’.  Mary had two sons, although her marriage later ended in divorce.

In 1952, Mary married Eric Siepmann, a journalist, whom she had met at the Ritz during the war.  They had one son.  At the time of her husband’s death in 1970. She had written two children’s books and had only a widow’s pension, together with £50 a month from a trust on which to live.  They were difficult times and only improved a few years later with the publication of her first novel.  Since then, three have been televised, the most recent being Harnessing Peacocks and before that Camomile Lawn and Jumping the Queue.

Mary has twice lectured at the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival and at Ways with Words at Dartington.

It is now sixty years since Mary attended the London School of Economics and she is thrilled that although she took a rather dilettante approach to her studies, and certainly no exams, the LSE made her an honorary fellow in July of this year.  She has also been given an honorary degree by both Exeter and the Open Universities.

Update:  Mary lived in Totnes up until her death in 2002.  In the last twenty years of her life, she sold three million copies of her books, including ten best sellers.  Mary's writings were undertaken in longhand at her desk on the upper landing of her cottage.