Rose Collis Book order

Tells the story of the extraordinary life of the actress Coral Browne, who is remembered for her performances, her glamour, her liberated attitude to sex and her often-savage wit.

PORTRAITS TO THE WALL is a celebration of lesbian lives hitherto concealed by history. It is a study of powerful and swashbuckling heroines, who can put their more famous male counterparts to shame. Rose Collis rediscovers the lives and loves, consorts and concerns, passions and politics of a diverse range of women from the long-suffering Queen Anne and the eccentric composter and suffragist Ethel Smyth, who once spent two months in Holloway Prison for throwing a brick through a Cabinet Minister's window, to the formidable Eve Balfour, founder of the Soil Association and nicknamed the 'Compost Queen' and Selma Lagerlof, the first woman ever to win the Novel Prize for Literature (in 1909). Irresistible and garrulous, PORTRAITS TO THE WALL provides fascinating insights into the lives of a once-scandalous group of women. It exposes a culture and lifestyle which has previously received little, or no, documentation. Rose Collis is a writer and journalist living in London. Her work has appeared in The Independent, Time Out, Gay Times and Tribune. She is currently working on a biography of media personality Nancy Spain to be published by Cassell in 1995.