Maureen Emerson is a non-fiction author.
Maureen Emerson's parents grew up in Dublin (her mother was a model along with Maureen Fitzsimmons, later Maureen O'Hara) and they ran away to get married. She was born in a cottage in a Somerset village at the outbreak of war. In 1940 her father joined the RAF and, together with her mother, she returned to Dublin where she spent an idyllic six years. After the war ended, in 1946, the three left for a new life in England and a war torn London.
Maureen attended a traditional convent school in Hammersmith followed by secretarial college in Regent Street which led to employment in the post room of J. Arthur Rank Productions and other jobs. Her funds, however, bought her a ticket to a very post-war Paris where a friend was working in a parfumerie in the Rue Scribe. âÂÂHow elegant were the elderly hard-faced manageresses in their perfectly cared-for black suits, Oh, the thrill of it all!"
Back in London, she returned to temporary work, before having an amazing stroke of luck. She was introduced to a female paediatrician who, although single, had adopted three children and needed an au pair. The extended family spent part of the year in Paris and at an ancient farmhouse in Normandy. The parents were rich, artistic, new Proust and been friends with the artist Berthe Morisot. "What an introduction to France and, for this, I have never ceased to be grateful,â she recalls.
After marriage in 1961, Maureen moved with her geologist husband to Algiers. Before her marriage Maureen had already been out to visit and found a job with the US Information Service for six months. Her daughter was born a year later in the Clinique Laverne, in downtown Algiers. After returning to the UK, and following the birth of her two sons, she moved to Beirut for two years, followed by Dallas for two years and then Singapore.
In 1977 Maureen's husband was asked to move to Provence. Having been born in Bordeaux there was no question about accepting the posting and Maureen and her family settled close to the village of Valbonne. During this time, Maureen worked as a local representative in the television festivals held in Monaco and Cannes. For CBS, she âÂÂhad the great funâ organising large receptions at the Musée Massena in Nice and the Château de la Napoule. Then on to NBC, which had a more serious, less flamboyant, profile.
Maureen lived in Valbonne for over 20 years and moving back and forth between England and France, she had always done voluntary work with the donated books at the old Sunny Bank Hospital in Cannes. Often very old and very learned, among them was one by an author she had never heard of, and that book changed her life. "Who was Winifred Fortescue and what was this book Perfume from Provence? Did she really write six other books on Provence? I must find them, I must find the two houses she lived in, her friends and what happened to her during the war.âÂÂ
After returning to England in 2000 Maureen settled in East Sussex but continued with her research into Winifred Fortescue and writing about France between the wars. She has produced numerous articles including, the history of the Anglo American Sunny Bank Hospital in Cannes, , Sir John Fortescue, Spitfire Pilot Richard Hillary, Eric Dunstan (âÂÂthe man with the golden voiceâÂÂ), Olga Khokhlova and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, (âÂÂRussians of the RivieraâÂÂ).
After years of painstaking research Maureen produced her first book, Escape to Provence - published in 2008. This is the true story of two remarkable women who, with style and energy, in the tremulous peace between two world wars, carved out new lives for themselves in a village in the South of France. An American from Philadelphia, Elisabeth Parrish Starr a heroine of the Great War, and an Englishwoman, the author Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue, whose memoir Perfume from Provence became a best-seller of the 1930s and âÂÂ40s, both escaped to Provence for quite different reasons. Her second book is titled Riviera Dreaming â the Côte dâÂÂAzur in Love and War - published in 2018 by IB Tauris, now Bloomsbury Publishing . Once again, following lengthy research Maureen produced a factual biography of Barry Dierks, âÂÂthe American architect of the Rivieraâ who built or remodelled around 70 of the most stunning villas on the coast of the South of France in the first half of the 20th century. The story tells of the life of Barry, his partner in business and life, the Englishman Colonel Eric Sawyer, and their wonderful villas and gardens.
Maureen and her husband now reside near London where she continues to engage in her historical research into the French Riviera between the wars.