Exmoor Lockdown Diary 41 - Interview With a Truly Remarkable Woman

Many years ago I interviewed a truly remarkable woman. She was called Heidi and she was a countess, or something like that - and she had at one time in her life been a Hollywood starlet.

On this rainy day during the lockdown I’ve been going through my old filing cabinets and I found this interview recorded on an old Sony Walkman Professional recorder - so please forgive the sound quality - but believe me, this interview is really worth listening to.

Heidi talks about the men of Hollywood and refers to having been forced to wrestle with them - thank goodness we’ve now entered the ‘me too’ era where that sort of thing is hopefully a thing of the past. Anyway, Heidi also tells me about her life living on a floating palace on the Nile.

In fact, if I’m honest there is a character in my new novel The Lemon Tree Forest which is loosely based on her.

These photographs of Heidi were taken by my father perhaps 45 or 50 years ago - when she was making a living renovating paintings.