I read this quite a few years ago - can't think how I missed adding it here. Its biggest flaw, in my opinion, was that a good bit of it was speculative. Blanch found 4 women whose stories she thought were really cool - but there wasn't (apparently, for her) enough material on them to give each her own book, or even write a whole lot about what they actually did. Instead, Blanch spends a lot of time talking about what things "must" have felt or been like for these women. This is especially true about Dubucq de Rivery. Wilder became a counsellor for Radner as he was twice-divorced and had plenty of advice to depart on the actress who was 13 years his junior. Admittedly, Arabian nights and Turkish delights have never held much excitement for my fancy, so the setting of Lesley Blanch’s four-woman, biographical vignettes, THE WILDER SHORES OF LOVE, combined with her stilted, formal, presentation, may have been a part of the reasons I found it rather uninteresting. So secondly we learn a little more about Jane Digby El Mezrab, who was reasonably well-known to the Burton’s having married her last husband in Syria before the couple arrived together in Damascus. This life is a series of closely-linked monogamous relationships, some involving marriage, and children, but not necessarily all having either characteristic. This was a highly intelligent and educated woman who challenged herself beyond any perceived restrictions, and earned great respect among the people she eventually resided with in the desert. Her god-daughter calls her “ a Sheherezade figure”. Blanch romanticises in vivid detail her girlhood in the years leading up to World War One. She had a baby by an Italian soldier, gave it up for adoption and never mentions it again. I couldn’t decide whether she was heartbroken or heartless. Her first teenage impression of Florence was that it was “ forbidding”; Venice was “ draughty”.

During the filming of Hanky Panky the pair remained friends, but when Radner officially divorced her husband in 1982 they instantly reconnected and became inseparable. The New York Times noted later that year: “All of Mr Wilder’s future plans appear to include Miss Radner.” This has become one of my favourite books and one I love to re-read. It's also made me want to read everything by Lesley Blanch - She was such an engaging storyteller.Although the doctors explained she would not be able to have children, they had not expressly diagnosed her with anything life-threatening. This one took me a while to get through, mostly because I didn't take it away on a recent trip, but also it wasn't the most engaging read for me. This book is actually a very engaging account of four women who threw off their corsets, shouted "to hell with convention" and decided to go and get some action in the Middle East. The four women in question are Isabel Burton who pursued and married Richard Francis Burton with what can only be described as frightening determination, Jane Digby el-Mezrab ( a proper English lady in both senses of the word), Aimee Du Becq de Rivery (cousin of Josephine Bonaparte) and Isabelle Eberhardt (the cross-dressing linguist). All four women came from educated, upper class families but sought an escape in the desert, and normally in the arms of men who society would have deemed utterly inappropriate at the time. This song continues the conflict placed in the first song, but this time in a more personal way, representing the great problem of the human being, which can not feel love freely, or in this case, wildly.

At the time, Radner was still married to her first husband G.E. Smith but Wilder had been mostly single since divorcing his second wife Mary Schutz in 1974. Physicians immediately enrolled the actress in chemotherapy but her treatments were often bombarded by reporters looking for information on her condition and to speak to her husband. The Saturday Night Live actress admitted her “heart fluttered” when she first met Wilder on the set of Hanky Panky in 1981.

Let me borrow from goodreader, Elizabeth’s October, 2012 review of this book in which she wrote, “I really enjoy stories about strong, independent and adventurous women!” So do I. Substantive on Isabel Burton and Jane Digby but became conjectural on the last two. Her style became wearing after awhile - very sweeping and romantic.