Before she mastered the art of French cooking in midlife, Julia Child found herself working in the secrets trade in Asia during World War II, a journey that will delight both historical fiction fans and lovers of America’s most beloved chef, revealing how the war made her into the icon we know now.
Single, 6 foot 2, and thirty years old, Julia McWilliams took a job working for America’s first espionage agency, years before cooking or Paris entered the picture. The Secret War of Julia Child traces Julia’s transformation from ambitious Pasadena blue blood to Washington, DC file clerk, to head of General “Wild Bill” Donovan’s secret File Registry as part of the Office of Strategic Services.
The wartime journey takes her to South Asia’s remote front lines of then-Ceylon, India, and China, where she finds purpose, adventure, self-knowledge – and love with mapmaker Paul Child. The spotlight has rarely shone on this fascinating period of time in the life of (“I’m not a spy”) Julia Child, and this lyrical story allows us to explore the unlikely world of a woman in a World War II spy station who has no idea of the impact she’ll eventually impart.
It was perhaps inevitable and, interesting, to see how the Daily Mail would cover my book Her Lotus Year and what it has to say about Wallis Simpson’s time in China…. Well click here to read….
On Wednesday, November 6th, join me and the legendary Frances Wood in conversation at the beautiful Hatchards bookshop on Piccadilly. We’ll be talking about my new book Her Lotus Year: China, The Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson(Elliot & Thompson). It should be a fun and revealing evening. For more information and to purchase tickets click here:
The London Times have some fun with some of the more salacious rumours that swirled around Wallis’s time in China – and are debunked by me. However, they were all true of other people in China in the 1920s…. (The description of Sir Victor Sassoon as an “Italian hotelier” is not from me or the book, and “harlot” is a very Times slur i feel!!).
Preorder USA – https://read.macmillan.com/lp/her-lotus-year-9781250287472/
Preorder – UK – https://eandtbooks.com/books/her-lotus-year/
Preorder HK – https://bookazine.com.hk/products/her-lotus-year#:~:text=In%20her%20memoirs%2C%20Wallis%20described,to%20appreciate%20traditional%20Chinese%20aesthetics.
An SVC cap badges from April 4 1854 – a little special as it commemorates The Battle of Muddy Flat on that date. Units of the SVC joined British and American military units (I think the first time US and GB troops fought together after the American War of Independence) repelling Qing imperial troops besieging the rebel-held city ignored foreign demands to move further away from the foreign concessions.
A 10 Pfennig stamp from the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory, 1901. Covering 213 sqm of Shandong inc Kiautschou (Jiaozhou) Bay & Tsingtao (Qingdao), it was operated by the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy between 1898-1914….
I’d seen this Air India Hong Kong poster form the 1960s before but a few details explaining this one…
The Air-India Maharajah mascot was created in 1946 by Bobby Kooka and Umesh Rao – Kooka was Commercial Director with Air India and Rao, an artist at J Walter Thompson in Bombay. Kooka once said: ‘“We can call him the Maharajah for want of a better description. But his blood isn’t blue. He may look like royalty, but he isn’t royal. He is capable of entertaining the Queen of England and splitting a beer with her butler. He is a man of many parts: lover boy, sumo wrestler, pavement artist, vendor of naughty post cards, Capuchin monk, Arab merchant…”
The posters were printed in India by Prasad Process Private of Madras on Japanese paper.
