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CELEBRATE
This archive, dedicated to Joan Wyndham, was launched in April 2008 to celebrate the one year anniversary of her death and to offer an online tribute to a remarkable woman

GROWTH
Over the next few months more material about Joan and her life will be added to the archive. If you knew Joan, have memories or images of her please contact us so we can include them:

NEWS
A stage show based on Joan Wyndham's wartime memoirs. More >>>

 Born in 1921, Joan Wyndham aspired in her youth to be, first, an actress, then an artist, worked latterly as a journalist, cook and restaurant critic but will be forever remembered as a wartime diarist and chronicler of Chelsea Bohemian life in her four volumes of memoirs. One reviewer described her as 'Pepys in camiknickers'.

In the 1980s, Joan's daughter, Camilla, found her mother's diaries, written 40 years previously and encouraged her to get them published. The contents emerged as Love Lessons (1985) and Love is Blue (1986) covering the surprisingly pleasurable war years and Joan's peripatetic childhood. Anything Once (1992) tells the story of her grown-up life with all its ups and downs and in her last book, Dawn Chorus (1994) Joan wrote in more detail about her childhood and teenage years.

The obituaries and reviews reproduced in this website will serve as an introduction to the life and work of a remarkable woman, but her books remain as a testament to her talent and we encourage you to seek them out.

As frank and funny in print as in real life, Joan's readers, as did her friends, adore her warmth and generosity of spirit, her sangfroid and lust for life.