Esmond and Ilia
An Unreliable Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Marina Warner
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By:
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Marina Warner
About this listen
Marina Warner's father, Esmond, met her mother, Ilia, while serving as an officer in the British Army during the Second World War. As Allied forces fought their way north through Italy, Esmond found himself in the southern town of Bari, where Ilia had grown up, one of four girls of a widowed mother. The Englishman approaching middle age and the twenty-one-year-old Italian were soon married. Before the war had come to an end, Ilia was on her way alone to London to wait for her husband's return and to learn how to be Mrs. Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman.
Ilia begins to learn the world of cricket, riding, canned food, and distant relations she has landed in, while Esmond struggles to support his wife and young daughter. He comes up with the idea of opening a bookshop, a branch of W.H. Smith's, in Cairo, where he had spent happy times during the North African campaign. In Egypt, however, nationalists are challenging foreign influences, especially British ones, and before long Cairo is on fire.
Esmond and Ilia is a picture of vanished worlds, a portrait of two people struggling to know each other and themselves, a daughter's story of trying to come to terms with a past that is both hers and unknowable to her. It is an "unreliable memoir" and a lasting work of literature, lyrical, sorrowful, shaped by love and wonder.
©2021 Marina Warner (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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The Housekeeper's Tale
- The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House
- By: Tessa Boase
- Narrated by: Tessa Boase
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Using secret diaries, unpublished letters, and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.
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Utterly intriguing
- By Pamela Jane on 09-14-17
By: Tessa Boase
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The Quest for Queen Mary
- By: James Pope-Hennessy, Hugo Vickers - editor
- Narrated by: Tim Bentinck, Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The highly acclaimed unexpurgated notes taken by James Pope-Hennessy for his official biography of Queen Mary, the present Queen's grandmother. Published in full for the first time and edited by much-admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers. When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years....
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obscure but poor gold
- By Dr. A. on 11-20-18
By: James Pope-Hennessy, and others
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Virgins of Paradise
- By: Barbara Wood
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Jasmine and Camelia Rasheed grow to womanhood under the watchful eye of their grandmother inside the walls surrounding a beautiful house on Virgins of Paradise Street in exotic Cairo. They come of age in society in which the subjugation of women is assumed - they must wear veils, are forbidden to leave the house, have no independent rights, and are circumcised to ensure purity and obedience.
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eye opening
- By C Ohana on 11-13-08
By: Barbara Wood
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The Little Princesses
- The Story of the Queen's Childhood by Her Nanny, Marion Crawford
- By: Marion Crawford, Jennie Bond - foreword
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Originally published in 1950, The Little Princesses was the first account of British Royal life inside Buckingham Palace as revealed by Marion Crawford, who served as governess to princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.
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The Beginnig of My Interest on the Royal Family
- By A. Bauza Higuera on 12-30-22
By: Marion Crawford, and others
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Cocaine Blues
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Stephanie Daniel
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
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His life was interesting, but not his memoir
- By DR Harle on 01-27-19
By: Amos Oz
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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Wait for Me!
- Memoirs
- By: Deborah Mitford Duchess of Devonshire
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.
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The last of the Mitford Sisters
- By Irene on 01-11-11
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The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
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Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
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Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
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terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith