George VI's sister; daughter of King George V and Queen Mary

like Princess Anne the Princess Royal, so was Mary long before Princess Anne as the only daughter of the sovereign.

 

 

 

 

 

Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood On February 28, 2017 By RSBIn The House of Windsor

If ever there was a 20th century English princess that did things “correctly,” it would be George V’s daughter, Princess Mary. I say this mainly because the extent of what we don’t know about her could fill a book. She lived a life devoted to public duty, supporting her father, her brothers, Edward VIII and George VI, and later her niece, Queen Elizabeth. Today, however, marks the anniversary of her wedding to Henry Lascelles, Earl of Harewood in 1922, and so we’ll take this opportunity to take a quick look at her life.

Mary was born on April 25, 1897 to George, Duke of York and his wife, Mary of Teck, Duchess of York at York Cottage on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was her parents’ third child, joining her elder brothers, Princes Edward and Albert in the York nursery. At the time of her birth her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was still on the throne and her father was second in line to the throne, making her position mirror that of Princess Charlotte today. Notably, she was christened Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, however Queen Victoria apparently proposed naming her “Diamond” in honor of her Diamond Jubilee which took place that year, marking her 60th year as queen.

 

Princess Mary with her mother Mary of Teck, Duchess of York

In 1901 Victoria died and Mary’s grandfather ascended the throne as Edward VII, while her parents were soon invested as Prince and Princess of Wales. Even so, little about Mary’s life initially changed given her parents’ devotion to living as quietly as possible. After Mary, three more brothers would join the household, Princes Henry, George and John, the last of whom appears to have suffered from epilepsy. He would eventually be moved to a separate household and died at the age of 13 in 1919.

Mary’s education was limited by modern standards, dictated primarily by a governess and occasional shared lessons with her brothers, who undertook more rigorous studies. In light of her more famous brothers’ royal careers, much has been made of the  upbringing of the York children. The future George V was known to have been a strict father, eliciting fear from his sons and exacerbating the stammer of his second son, Prince Albert. His behavior towards his daughter appears to have been somewhat of an exception and he wasn’t nearly as hard on her. In any event, Mary was close with her siblings, particularly Edward and Albert.

Mary and her five brothers

In 1910, when Mary was 13, Edward VII died and her father ascended the throne. The new King George and Queen Mary reluctantly moved their family to Buckingham Palace and life would change dramatically. Increased public duties meant that Mary saw less of her parents, while her older brothers began their careers in the military. In 1914 World War I broke out and Mary did her part to support the British cause by joining her mother on engagements at hospitals and public welfare organizations. To mark Christmas of that year, the “Princess Mary’s Christmas Gift Fund” was set up, providing £100,000 worth of gifts for soldiers serving in the War. Over the course of the war, Mary would become deeply involved in nursing efforts and the Girl Guide movement, causes to which she would remain devoted for the rest of her life.

Queen Mary and Princess Mary

On November 20, 1921 Mary became engaged to Henry, Viscount Lascelles, the eldest son of the Earl of Harewood. He apparently proposed while visiting the Royal Family at York Cottage, which the King and Queen still used as a country estate instead of Sandringham House, which had been retained by George’s mother, Queen Alexandra, during her widowhood. Queen Mary wrote in her diary of the occasion:

“At 6.30 Mary came to my room to announce to me her engagement to Lord Lascelles! We then told G. (King George V) & then gave Harry L. our blessing. We had to keep it quiet owing to G. having to pass an order in council to give his consent. Of course everybody guessed what had happened & we were very cheerful & almost uproarious at dinner. We are delighted.”

The couple were married in Westminster Abbey on February 28, 1922, which notably marked the first royal wedding to take place there since Richard II married Anne of Bohemia in 1382. Of perhaps even more historical significance, however, was the fact that among Mary’s bridesmaids was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, whom Mary’s brother, Prince Albert, was actively pursuing. After rejecting his first two proposals, Elizabeth finally accepted his third and the two were married in April 1923, also at the Abbey.

 

There are varying reports as to the happiness of the Lascelles’ marriage. Years after the wedding, rumors spread that Mary had only accepted Henry’s proposal due to pressure from her parents and that her brother, Prince Edward, had been staunchly against it, horrified that his sister was being made to marry someone she didn’t love. Another rumor claimed that Henry only proposed after losing a bet at his club. Their son would later write in his memoirs, however, that his parents were well-suited and got along well.

Mary and Henry set up their base at Chesterfield House in London and took up Goldsborough Hall in Yorkshire as a country retreat. Less than a year after marrying, on February 7, 1923, Mary gave birth to her first son, George, at home in London. On August 21, 1924 she would give birth to her second and last child, Gerald. On October 6, 1929 Henry’s father died and he inherited the family earldom, and the young couple and their children officially moved into Harewood House in West Yorkshire.

In 1931 Mary’s aunt, Louise of Wales, Duchess of Fife died, opening up the title Princess Royal, typically held by the monarch’s eldest daughter. Edward VII had bestowed it upon his daughter in 1905 and on January 1, 1932, George V passed it along to Mary. Four years later, the King died and her brother, Prince Edward, began his brief and infamous reign as Edward VIII.

Mary was remarkably close with Edward and, like many members of the family, was devastated by the events that unfolded over the course of 1936 and shocked when her brother abdicated. Though she was supportive of Albert when he ascended the throne as King George VI, she remained loyal to Edward for the remainder of her life and strongly disagreed with measures that excluded him from family events. Most notably, when Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip in 1947, Mary refused to attend on the grounds that Edward hadn’t been invited.

Shortly after the abdication, Mary visited her brother in Vienna, the only one of his siblings to come see him in the immediate years after his reign. She would be similarly supportive when Edward was in England in 1965 receiving medical treatment, visiting him in hospital as he recovered from surgery.

Mary and Edward

She continued her public duties on behalf of George VI, particularly once World War II broke out, during which time she served as chief controller of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, later the Women’s Royal Army Corps. She also became air chief commandant of Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service in 1950 and received the honorary rank of general in the British Army in 1956

 

 Mary at Harewood House

Mary was widowed on May 24, 1947 and she spent the rest of her life continuing to live at Harewood House with her eldest son, George, and his family. When George VI died in 1952 and was succeeded by her niece, Elizabeth II, Mary attended her coronation in 1953 and represented her at the independence celebrations of Trinidad and Tobago in 1962. One of her last public appearances was in Sweden for the funeral of her cousin, Queen Louise.

While taking a walk on the grounds of Harewood House with her son and grandchildren Mary suffered a heart attack and died on March 28, 1965. She is buried in Yorkshire alongside her husband.

 

The lost love letters of Dunkirk: Written by soldiers facing oblivion, a bundle of post - including a private's poem and another's hopes of becoming a father - never arrived and gathered dust for 80 years... until now 

 

As part of a bundle of 50 written by soldiers at the end of May 1940 from the 1st Battalion, the Suffolk Regiment, the postal van carrying them was abandoned in the confusion of battle.

 

 

 

 

Bond's Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger - complete with bulletproof shield, revolving number plates and fake machine guns - goes on sale (but you WON'T be able to drive it on public roads) 

We've been expecting it, Mr Bond...and finally it's here. First of 25 limited-run gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5s, which made its big-screen debut in the 1964, has been reborn in the 21st century. Its bulletproof shield, revolving number plates, blazing machine guns, oil-slick system and other special-agent features made the 007 DB5 a legendary vehicle in the Swinging Sixties and beyond. The replica, which isn't road legal and costs £3.3million, features many of these items. We've had an exclusive first look at 'Job1' - the first example off the production line in 2020.

Quarantine camps, face masks and makeshift hospitals: Incredible photographs reveal how Australia last dealt with closed borders as the Spanish Flu devastated the nation 101 years ago

New South Wales shutting out Victoria due to the coronavirus is not the first time a global pandemic has separated the states. The Spanish Flu ravaged Australia in 1919, leaving 15,000 dead within a year of the first case in January, while killing 50 to 100million people worldwide.   Australia's population stood at about five million at the time, and more than a third of all Australians were infected with the disease at some point.

  Dame Mary Hughes and Dame Enid Lyons (pictured together in 1955) are among the longest-serving prime minister's wives, both holding the position for more than seven years.

Going to school!

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryqueensland/3219069891

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-22/nell-tritton-alexander-kerensky-saved-from-stalin-hitler-history/12472416?utm_source=abc_news&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_content=mail&utm_campaign=abc_news 

The extraordinary life of Nell Tritton, an Australian heiress who saved her husband from assassins  ABC Radio National / 

By Sophie Kesteven and Anna Whitfeld for Late Night Live

Brisbane woman Nell Tritton married former Russian leader Alexander Kerensky

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Kerensky

— and saved his life more than once.(Courtesy: Mrs Lavinia Tritton)Share 

Lydia Tritton wanted an adventurous life, and she got one.

Nell, as she was known, was born in Brisbane in 1899. She travelled widely, drove rally cars, and saved the life of her husband, a former Russian prime minister who was hunted by Stalin's assassins and was "on Hitler's death list".

"She decided that if she's going to have a short life it's going to be a really interesting one," Susanna de Vris, an author and historian who has researched Nell's life, tells ABC RN's Late Night Live.

Nell's expectation of a short life wasn't doomsaying.

She was brought up in a wealthy family, and was an heiress to a successful furniture store.

A young Nell Tritton as a debutante.(Supplied: Mrs Lavinia Tritton)

But a water tank the family drank from had been lined with lead, and it damaged their immune systems; her brother and sister both would die of the Spanish flu.

Nell was 19 when she learned the grim news — and she became a woman well ahead of her time.

"She wanted to have a career at the time where nice girls just dreamed of marriage," de Vris says.

"Her mother was quite horrified and said, 'Girls from your background do not have careers — they get married!'"

Ignoring her mother's advice, Nell went on to become a cadet journalist for the Brisbane Courier.

But she soon grew tired of reporting on fashion and parties, and took up rally driving.

"This is in a period where women hardly even drive cars, let alone rally driving — and she becomes this champion rally driver," de Vris says.

It was only a matter of time before Nell set her sights beyond the boundaries of Australia.

Paris, poets and assassination plots

In between the two wars, she travelled the globe, taking in London and Italy before settling in Paris.

Nell mingled with the French, Americans and Brits, and in 1928 married a Russian minor aristocrat by the name of Nicolai Nadejine — whom she would later divorce after he cheated on her.

But it was a friendship with a Russian poet that perhaps had the biggest impact on the path of her life.

Nell became good friends with Nina Berberova, and together they wrote a spy novel based on the Lockhart plot, a failed bid to kill Lenin and overthrow his regime.

"You can imagine these two very attractive dark-haired young girls who are really enjoying cafe society — this is Hemingway's Paris that she's in actually," de Vris says.

Through Berberova, Nell met a man named Alexander Kerensky.

Alexander Kerensky in his office in 1917 during his brief time as the Russian prime minister.(Getty: Keystone)

Kerensky had served as prime minister of the Russian provisional government, which was created following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, from July to October of 1917.

"He was the man who tried to bring elections to Russia and tried to turn it into a democratic society and who gave the vote to women," de Vris says.

"He also gave freedom to the Jews who had been persecuted."

He had also ordered the arrest of Vladimir Lenin, who became the first leader of Soviet Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution.

Kerensky, who escaped Russia ahead of the uprising, lived in exile in France and the US.

Nell ended up working as his press secretary and translator.

Over time, their working relationship grew into something more.

Nell Tritton was an ambitious woman who travelled the globe in years between the two world wars.(Supplied: Mrs Lavinia Tritton)

Kerensky divorced his wife Olga in 1939, and Nell and Kerensky got married in Pennsylvania soon after.

"They had to marry in secret though because twice Stalin had tried to have him assassinated," de Vris says.

According to de Vris, Nell witnessed some of these assassination attempts firsthand.

"Nell saved him in a car chase across Paris," de Vris says.

"Her rally driving skills come to the fore and this car with machine guns poking out of the windows is following them and they have this hectic drive all across Paris.

"It's absolute film material."

Kerensky, de Vris says, was also on Hitler's hit list.

"They ran this newspaper in Paris, this anti-communist, anti-Hitler newspaper, and Kerensky had always taken up the cause of the Jews because the Jews were always horrifically persecuted under the Tsar," de Vris says.

"And he's written about Hitler's treatment of the Jews, so he knows he's on Hitler's death list."

A box of papers gave Ariana clues to her father's secret past  

A childhood discovery of a puzzling ID card in a cardboard box set Ariana Neumann on a decades-long investigation, uncovering her father's tragic past and an incredible tale of survival.

Fleeing France for their lives

When the Germans invaded Paris, the couple knew they'd have to escape.

"They get caught up in this dreadful cavalcade of cars. There's this 15-mile procession of cars," de Vris says.

"Every morning at dawn the German planes come over and bomb these defenceless people in their cars, many of whom are Jewish [people] fleeing from Paris because they know otherwise they will be in concentration camps."

She says the couple had to "shelter in ditches and under hedges from the bombs".

"And there's dead bodies and shattered limbs all over the road, and they have to push the cars with the dead drivers into the ditch so they can carry on in this procession that inches its way slowly further south."

De Vris says after a tumultuous three-week journey, the couple made it to the Spanish frontier.

"But their names are on a blacklist and they're banned, so they have to go back, retrace their steps, and eventually they get onto a war ship that Churchill sends."

The US government financed their travels to New York, and they moved into a small apartment in Park Avenue. Kerensky became an advisor on Russian affairs.

The couple later lived in a farmhouse near the New York-Connecticut border, living a social life and entertaining friends with croquet.

But the health warning Nell received from the doctor at the age of 19 caught up with her.

In 1945, she returned to Australia with Kerensky. The following year she suffered a stroke, and died on April 10.

She was just 47 years old. But in those 47 years, she certainly succeeded in living a very courageous life.

 

 

 

 

 

We watch a lot of SBS and used to enjoy this petite little lady.

 

© AAP Image/Joe Castro Gold Logie nominee Lee Lin Chin arrives at the 2016 Logie Awards.The former SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin has confirmed she resigned from SBS after 30 years in 2018 because she was unhappy with management’s treatment of staff and the corporate direction of the multicultural broadcaster.

Chin’s decision to publicly rebuke SBS management follows revelations by other former SBS staffers this month that they had suffered racism and toxicity in the workplace.

Chin, who was born in Singapore, told Guardian Australia she did not suffer from racist attitudes at SBS, but believed there were systemic workplace issues at the broadcaster, including a lack of diversity in management.

 

In a 2018 letter to then SBS chairman Hass Dellal, obtained by Guardian Australia, Chin said the “lack of consideration and common human respect” for SBS staff had made her so unhappy she quit before her contract was up.

Related: New SBS chair to mull what white men can and can't do | Weekly Beast

“My reasons for arriving at this difficult decision is the general unhappiness at the style of management of the network, the culture resulting from it, the mistreatment of staff in the lack of consideration and common human respect, as well as the direction SBS is moving,” Chin wrote to Dellal, asking the chairman for a meeting.

Dellal expressed surprise at her reason for resigning, saying he believed staff satisfaction reviews were “exceptionally positive”.

A spokesman for SBS said the chairman had twice requested to meet Chin after her email, but she did not respond.

“As stated at the time of her departure, SBS respected Lee Lin’s decision at the time to leave SBS to pursue other commercial opportunities, and wished her well in those endeavours,” the spokesman said.

“In relation to the correspondence – SBS Chairman Dr Hass Dellal AO twice invited Lee Lin to meet with him to discuss her email, including over the phone if preferred. Lee Lin did not respond to those invitations. As such there were no specific allegations which could be investigated.”

In her last few years at SBS, Chin had branched out into performing comic segments for The Feed, took part in Eurovision Song Contest coverage and was the first SBS personality to be nominated for a Gold Logie in 2016.

Chin’s departure from the network where she had presented the 6.30pm World News on Saturdays and Sundays since 1988, was framed by the network as the retirement of “one of SBS’s most beloved identities” and “one of Australia’s most recognisable and respected newsreaders”.

 

Prince Harry's ex girlfriend wed.

Following Beatrice's lead? Prince Harry's ex Cressida Bonas marries Harry Wentworth-Stanley in private before 'riding off into the sunset' on horseback

Cressida Bonas, 31, has married estate agent fiancé Harry Wentworth-Stanley

Actress, who dated Prince Harry, is thought to have married over the weekend

Photo was shared online by her brother Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-CalthorpeComes after her friend Princess Beatrice wed in a surprise service at Windsor 

Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas has married her fiancé Harry Wentworth-Stanley in a private ceremony. 

The Winchester-born actress, 31, who famously dated the Duke of Sussex, 35, for three years, exchanged vows with Mr Wentworth-Stanley, the estate agent son of the Marchioness of Milford Haven, over the weekend. 

The couple, who are thought to have cancelled their original plans due to the coronavirus pandemic, tied the knot in a countryside ceremony attended by family including the bride's brother Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, who shared a photograph of the happy couple on Instagram.

 

Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas has married her fiancé Harry Wentworth-Stanley in a private ceremony. This photo was shared by her brother Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe.

Details of Cressida and Harry's wedding are not known but the photo shows the bride riding the horse with her white sleeveless wedding dress pulled up over her knees. The groom is dressed in a navy suit. 

Cressida has previously spoken of her desire to have a low-key wedding and it appears she was granted her wish. 

There currently are a maximum of 30 people allowed at weddings in England. It is not known how many guests were invited to the ceremony but the couple both come from large families that would quickly make up the numbers. 

Cressida is the only child of 1960s 'It' Girl Lady Mary-Gaye Georgiana Lorna Curzon and her third husband, Old Harrovian entrepreneur Jeffrey Bonas. 

The actress has three half-brothers from her father Jeffrey Bonas' first marriage, George, Charles and Henry Bonas. Meanwhile her mother has four children to her first two husbands: Pandora Cooper-Key, daughter of Esmond Cooper-Key, and sculptor Georgiana Anstruther, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, and Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, the children of property developer John Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Isabella is married to Sir Richard Branson's son Sam. 

Harry is the second child of Nick-Wentworth-Stanley and his first wife Clare, now Marchioness of Milford Haven. His older brother James Wentworth-Stanley, took his own life in 2006 at the age of 21, and he has a younger sister, Louisa, born in 1993. 

 

In May Cressida hinted that their original wedding had to be postponed due to the current crisis, posting a snap as she and Harry posed in front of an 'Auto-wed' machine in fancy dress 

His father went onto have three more children with his second wife, Mille Brenninkmeyer, while his mother, now Marchioness of Milford Haven, inherited two stepchildren on her marriage to the Queen's cousin, George Mountbatten.

Cressida, who appeared in this year's ITV drama White House Farm, announced her engagement to estate agent Harry in August 2019. The couple first dated while studying at university before rekindling their romance in 2017.

In May she hinted that their original wedding had to be postponed due to the current crisis, posting a snap as she and Harry posed in front of an 'Auto-wed' machine in fancy dress outfits.

 

 

  

The actress has previously revealed how her 'dream day' was a small, non-traditional wedding not in a church - the complete opposite to her ex-boyfriend's nuptials. Pictured: Cressida at Prince Harry's wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018

 

   

'I bequeath all my beauty to my sister... since she has none': That acid quip, aged 9, helped trigger the lifelong feud between Olivia De Havilland - who has died aged 104 - and her sibling Joan Fontaine... a saga greater than Gone With The Wind

 

Stardom isn’t talent. It isn’t beauty, or fame. It is conviction — and from her teens until her death on Saturday aged 104, Olivia de Havilland was convinced she was the greatest star Hollywood ever produced.

And who could argue with her? De Havilland’s finest performance came in the most glamorous movie ever made, Gone With The Wind.

Her name was romantically linked with the biggest box office heroes, including Errol Flynn and James Stewart.

Her self-belief was so colossal that she was the only actress who dared risk her career by challenging the stranglehold that studios had on their stars — and in doing so brought about the beginning of the end of the ‘Hollywood system’.

Nothing could daunt or derail her. On Oscars night in 1940, she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress, playing the loving but doomed Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in Gone With The Wind.

She didn’t win. The prize went to Hattie McDaniel, as the maidservant, Mammy, the first African-American ever to win an Academy Award.

De Havilland, who was 23, was devastated. ‘When I returned home on Oscars night, I was convinced there was no God,’ she said, 75 years later. But her self-confidence soon reasserted itself.

She hadn’t won because Olivia de Havilland was no mere supporting actress. She was the true star of Gone With The Wind, and, of course, the judges had seen that. ‘Those blessed voters were not misled for one minute,’ she declared. ‘There is a God, after all!’

She went on to win two Oscars for Best Actress, in To Each His Own in 1946 and three years later in The Heiress.

But the humiliation was harder to take in 1942 when she was nominated for Hold Back The Dawn — only to see her younger sister, Joan Fontaine, win for the Alfred Hitchcock movie Suspicion.

Her first thought, she said, as the winner’s name was read out, was: ‘Oh my God. I’ve lost prestige with my own sister. And it was true — she was haughty to me after that.’ In fact, the rivalry between the siblings went back to early childhood. Olivia was born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, the daughter of a British patent lawyer and an actress.

Her parents brought her aged three to California for medical treatment: she was a sickly and asthmatic child.

Within a year, Augustus de Havilland had returned to his Japanese mistress, abandoning his wife and children: Olivia’s sister, Joan, was just a year younger than her.

Their mother remarried again, to a man named George Fontaine, but Olivia never liked him. She stayed aloof, but Joan did all she could to make her stepfather love her, even adopting his surname.

It was the beginning of a lifelong rift, one that frequently erupted into open warfare. Joan once told a reporter: ‘I remember not one act of kindness from Olivia all through my childhood. She so hated the idea of having a sibling she wouldn’t go near my crib.’

   When their mother remarried, Olivia (left) stayed aloof, but Joan (right) did all she could to make her stepfather love her, even adopting his surname

One frequently repeated story was that, aged nine, Olivia and her classmates were told to compose an imaginary ‘last will and testament’ for a homework exercise. Olivia wrote: ‘I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister, Joan, since she has none.’

The enmity came to a head on a summer’s day in 1933, when Olivia, 17, pushed her sister over beside a swimming pool and jumped on her, fracturing her collarbone. By then, Olivia was an amateur actress, playing Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Puck, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the Saratoga Community Theater.

That led to her first film role, again in the Shakespearean comedy, this time as the disobedient and lovestruck Hermia.

Warner Brothers hired her, and cast her in a movie called The Irish In Us, opposite Jimmy Cagney. She was terrified: ‘It was like jumping off a diving board in the Olympic contest without knowing how to swim or dive, and I just had to find my way.’

She asked Cagney how she could learn to act, and he told her: ‘Whatever you say, mean it.’ That advice, she often insisted, was the basis of her career.

The movie that made her a star was Captain Blood, a pirate adventure starring the rakish Errol Flynn. From the moment she saw him, she was smitten. ‘I was called for a test, to see how the two of us in costume would look together,’ she recalled.

‘I walked on the set, and they said, “Would you please stand next to Mr Flynn?” and I saw him. Oh my! Oh my! Struck dumb. I knew it was what the French call a coup de foudre.’

Audiences saw the sizzling chemistry between them, and the movie was a huge hit.

It led to eight more films together, including two smashes The Charge Of The Light Brigade and The Adventures Of Robin Hood. For months, gossip columnists hinted that the reserved, self-disciplined de Havilland and the dope-smoking, whisky-sodden Flynn would marry.

 

 

 

  

Olivia looks on after she was awarded with the Legion d'honneur at the Elysee Palace in France in September 2010

‘Nothing came of it,’ De Havilland said. ‘I’m not going to regret it. It could have ruined my life.’

What many observers predicted would both ruin her life and end her career was her decision to sue Warner Brothers in 1944, and break her contract.

She accused studio heads of withholding good parts and casting her in second-rate films — a common ruse to prevent stars from becoming too headstrong.

De Havilland was sick of playing ‘Melanie’ roles — the love interest who gazes adoringly at the hero and sacrifices herself when the plot demands it.

She wanted to play stronger, more independent characters — not least because she saw that Joan, under contract to RKO Pictures, was getting those parts, in films such as Rebecca and Suspicion.

Warners expected De Havilland to be ‘an ingenue’, a sweetheart. For years, De Havilland put a brave face on it. ‘Actually, I think playing bad girls is a bore,’ she told a reporter.

‘I have always had more luck with good-girl roles, because they require more from an actress.’

But finally she lashed out, despite warnings that whether she won or lost she would never work again. De Havilland won, and went on to win her Oscars in the more complex roles she craved, but her love affair with Hollywood was waning.

The only way to survive in Tinseltown, she said, was to imagine she was living in an alien city. ‘If you try to equate it with anything else, you’ll perish.’

  

Olivia holds two Oscars as she returns home following the Academy Awards Presentations

At the Cannes Film Festival in 1953, she met Pierre Galante, a journalist from Paris Match magazine.

He became her second husband and they bought a house near the Bois de Boulogne in the capital, where they raised a daughter, Gisele, and De Havilland’s son, Benjamin, from her marriage to screenwriter Marcus Goodrich.

The couple divorced in 1979, but De Havilland lived in Paris for the rest of her life. Her relationship with sister Joan froze, thawed and froze again.

When their mother died in 1975, Olivia tried to exclude her sibling from the memorial service. It was only when Joan threatened to go to the Press and cause a scandal that an invitation was extended.

At the service, the two women ignored each other, except for the moment when Olivia passed the casket to Joan so she could scatter a handful of ashes.

That was more civil than they managed to be at the Oscars four years later, when they had to be seated on opposite sides of the stage — or ten years after that when, to their mutual horror, they discovered that they were both booked into the same Beverly Hills hotel.

Joan — who died, aged 96, in 2013 — immediately checked out. Perhaps even she felt that her sister was the greater star.

At any rate, no one would ever convince Olivia de Havilland otherwise.

Bugatti's Baby II is a 'toy' replica of the Type 35 racer from the 1920s which costs up to £53,000, reaches 42mph and is aimed at CHILDREN

 

Those wanting the top of the range 'Pur Sang' model will have to shell out €58,500 (£53,000) to the Volkswagen-owned French firm. This version has a 13.4 horsepower electric motor and a 2.8kWh battery pack allowing for a top speed of up to 42mph and a range of 31 miles. For this hefty price tag, the Baby II comes with a hand-formed body. Much like the original Baby a century ago, only 500 of the vehicle's will be made, and most are already accounted for.

 

Rusty Ford Falcon sells for more than $300,000 at auction despite it being left to decay in a barn for more than 30 years

The one-owner 1973 Ford Falcon XA GT RPO 83 is one of Australia's rarest cars and attracted huge attention at the online auction on Wednesday. The Falcon is affectionately known as the 'chicken coupe' after its owner parked it away in a shed in 1988 and surrounded it with chicken wire to keep it safe.

Mansion which left Gough Whitlam stunned with its incredible history dating back to the 1850s sells for $25 million in Sydney's Darling Point 

The five-bedroom, five-bathroom trophy home in Sydney's affluent suburb of Darling Point boasts stunning harbour views and is surrounded by 1,500sqm of lush gardens. The property, which was first put on the market by Mr Espie and his wife Roslyn in 2018, has a rich history. Built in the 1850s, it was previously known as Clarke Lodge and Avoca and was once owned by the first mayor of Sydney John Hosking.