A life story that takes the reader from World War I Glasgow through 1940s and 50s New York to modern day Washington DC. In between, Helen Lillie's life mirrored the march of women from domestic appendage to independent citizen.
Born into a middle class family, externally the essence of respectability, Helen Lillie resolved early on not to emulate her female role models. If not 'rescued' by marriage, they seemed to look after elderly relatives and take long bracing country walks.
Battling her way through the regime at the Edinburgh boarding school, St Trinneans in the 1920s, by way of Glasgow University and the Yale Drama School, she succeeded against the odds in establishing a new kind of life.
Reviews
"unique insight"
Milngavie & Bearsden Herald
"an amusing memoir"
Radio Times
"epitomises the woman of the twentieth century - the title says it all"
The Herald
Excerpted from A New Kind of Life by Helen Lillie. Copyright (c) 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
'Marriage is now an option rather than, as in the past, a survival strategy.'
'I wonder why the British are so resistant to central heating?' I once remarked to an American who had an English wife. 'It's because if their houses were warm, people might take their clothes off,' he explained deadpan.
As a very young girl, when British women over thirty won the right to vote in 1918, I overheard a group of my father's business friends making light of this momentous happening. They chuckled that there would now be toasts to 'The Ladies. Once our superiors. Now our equals.' I never forgot this and I'm sure my mother, who was present, didn't either. Such snide, defensive denigration is still around.
From the Publisher
This publication was serialised in May 2000 for BBC Radio Scotland Storyline
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