Nancy Spain was a prominent novelist, broadcaster and journalist. She was a columnist for the Daily Express and She magazine in the 1950s and 1960s. She also appeared on many radio broadcasts, particularly on Woman's Hour, and later as a panellist on the television programmes What's My Line? and Juke Box Jury. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1917, she was the great-niece of the legendary Mrs Beeton. During the second world war she worked as a driver and served in the WRNS and after the war she published several detective novels set at a girls' school. Always controversial, her column-writing caused the Daily Express to be sued - twice - by Evelyn Waugh.
Full of fun, and that zest of intelligence that never left her after she had become famous and a name ... Sharing her own feelings of happiness was Nancy's art and privilege, a rare one in this day and place * SUNDAY TIMES * It is a happy, hilarious book ... N Spain, as she liked to call herself, loved to make people laugh, very often at herself * DAILY EXPRESS * Rumbustiously she rattles from childhood memories to TV gossip, anecdote, wisecrack, name-dropping and travelogue ... a high-spirited projection of the admired and lamented image * DAILY TELEGRAPH * Nancy's great qualities were her zest for life and her warm, North-country heart * TATLER * Have you ever read a book with this for a side-heading to a chapter: put that angel down, you don't know where she's been ? No? Well, start right now * ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS * A gay, generous autobiography-cum-travel book which the author finished only a few hours before her tragic last flight * SUNDAY EXPRESS * Some people thought her merely bohemian, but others were grateful to have so engaging a role-model * INDEPENDENT * As funny and warm and clever as Nancy herself. You can hear her voice in every line -- Frank Muir and Denis Norden