Ms Rosemary Bailey
Personal Statement: Rosemary Bailey was born in Halifax, Yorkshire and is an award-winning writer and journalist. She is the author of personal memoirs, and travel books about France, Italy and the USA. She has been based in the French Pyrenees for many years, and has now written three books about a region she has grown to love and know intimately. The best-selling Life in a Postcard described the life of her family in a mountain village, the restoration of a ruined monastery and the history of the monks who once lived there. In The Man who Married a Mountain she followed in the footsteps of the romantic 19th century mountaineer. Sir Henry Russell-Killough in his quest for the sublime. In her latest book, Love and War in the Pyrenees, she investigates the hidden history of the Second World War in Southern France, through letters, contemporary accounts and interviews, connecting experiences of occupation, resistance, escape routes and concentration camps to sites than can still be visited today, exploring the emotional history that underlies the bitter facts of wartime. In 1997 she wrote the acclaimed Scarlet Ribbons; A Priest with AIDS, the story of her brother, Rev. Simon Bailey, and the remarkable support he received from his Yorkshire mining village parish. She has written for many magazines and newspapers on a wide range of subjects, from feminism to French foibles. She is a regular tutor for the Arvon Writers’ Foundation and is currently a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, teaching writing at Queen Mary College, London University. She often gives talks about her books and travel experiences. Bailey is married to the biographer, Barry Miles, and has one son.
