Miranda Seymour proved both dogged and fortunate in pursuit of Hellé’s own dispersed collection of cuttings and .

Miranda Seymour proved both dogged and fortunate in pursuit of Hellé’s own dispersed collection of cuttings and memorabilia. Sometimes it seems that fame looks after its own, but here is a very well-told tale that shows us otherwise’. RUSSELL DAVIES, Sunday Telegraph. It also has the charm and fascination of a fairy tale, being the story of a country bumpkin who transformed herself into a glamorous and much-courted star.

The Bugatti Queen book. There is no doubt she was a pioneer, glamorous and beautiful to boot, which always helps, despite what the feminists would say! There is a lot in the book about motor vehicles and racing cars and engines and comparisons between one model over another and so on - petrol head stuff.

Miranda Jane Seymour (born 8 August 1948) is an English literary critic, novelist, and biographer. The lives she wrote included those of Robert Graves and Mary Shelley. Miranda Seymour was two years old when her parents moved into Thrumpton Hall, the family's ancestral home in Nottinghamshire. This celebrated Jacobean mansion is on the south bank of the River Trent at the secluded village of Thrumpton.

THE BUGATTI QUEEN is the story of a great pioneer of motor racing who happened to be a woman. Re-creating her rollercoaster career with great verve and panache, Miranda Seymour brilliantly shows us a life now forgotten - and makes it unforgettable. Пользовательский отзыв - Kirkus. The colorful, engrossing story of Helle Nice-exotic dancer, race-car driver, accused Nazi collaborator-told with considerable élan by biographer Seymour (Mary Shelley, 2001, et. Читать весь отзыв

2004) A non fiction book by Miranda Seymour.

2004) A non fiction book by Miranda Seymour. Drawn from a remarkable cache of newly discovered papers, Miranda Seymour's Bugatti Queen sheds new light on both the treacherous world of international racing and life in Occupied France, while revealing the story of a fearless and passionate woman who lived for challenge. Similar books by other authors.

After reading Miranda Seymour's excellent biography on The Life & Loves of Virginia Cherrill, I thought I would proceed further to an earlier book by Miss Seymour, titled simply The Bugatti Queen. As it turns out this book was a captivating adventure about an obscure subject that was quite relevant between the two World Wars on the sport of motor racing that takes place primarily in France and other parts of Europe including the United States.

Miranda Seymour came across her by chance. Wisely, Seymour makes little effort to tot up her innumerable lovers, though she observes that a title had a way of attracting Hélène's attention. Hélène was little more than a half-forgotten legend when the chance discovery of her old (and, happily, annotated) scrapbooks, at a French flea-market, gave Seymour the material help she needed. Immediately attracted to her subject, she determined to try to do her justice. Seymour is a novelist as well as a celebrated biographer, reliable and scholarly.

Miranda Seymour revels in The Bugatti Queen, the tale of a shameless former stripper .

Miranda Seymour revels in The Bugatti Queen, the tale of a shameless former stripper who won the world's first Grand Prix for women. Some, such as Violette Morris, would merit a book of their own. Morris was a boxer, weightlifter and javelin-thrower who, on taking up motor-racing, found that her heavy breasts hindered her hold of the wheel. So she had them lopped off. Then there's Miss Spinelli and her performing baboons, who dance on stilts at the raunchy Casino de Paris; not to mention Hellé herself on the high wire in the shortest shorts ever seen in a circus. You wonder how Seymour crams it all in. But it's at the racetrack that this yarn really gets going.

The Bugatti Queen (Paperback). Miranda Seymour (author). Please provide me with your latest book news, views and details of Waterstones’ special offers. THE BUGATTI QUEEN is the beautifully illustrated story of an indomitable and fascinating woman, a pioneer of motorsport who revelled in danger. Born in 1900 in a tiny French village, Helene Delangle, aka Helle Nice, became a dancer and a stripper before catching the eye of Ettore Bugatti.

Seymour adeptly paints Nice’s decline and fall. In 1936, she suffered a horrible accident in Brazil; a photo shows her cartwheeling from her auto in the midst of a high-speed crash. Later that same year, she was investigated for smuggling cars. Then, most damning, in 1949 Nice was publicly denounced by a fellow driver as a former Gestapo agent. Seymour thinks not: .. her collaboration, if she was guilty of it, might only have taken the pragmatic form of being on good terms with the occupiers.