Radio Gorgeous

Gorgeous Gossip on PETS

Love them or hate them they are in your life – we chat about the merits and the downside of our domesticated mammals. Pets.

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK – Anne Sebba – LAURA ASHLEY A Life in Design

What do you think of when the name Laura Ashley is mentioned? Green shops with no character making bland cloths and safe furniture in muted colours all very safe and corporate.

Laura Ashley’s vision was very different from the retailing conglomerate we know now. Laura Ashley had a vision: Go back home and create hand made cotton clothes dyed with natural colours and made up in her own factory in rural wales. She gave jobs to the community especially women who were encouraged to leave early and collect the children from school. Laura’s pattern cutter was an ex sheep shearer, what better person to do this exacting work. Laura loved families, beauty and hankered for the past.  She actually was a girl from suburbia who had been in the Wren’s during the war…tragically she died in 1984. Hear the whole story passionately told by author Anne Sebba who is the only person to have written an authorised biography of Laura.

annesebba.com

TRAVEL with Tilly Culme-Seymour – ISLAND SUMMERS Memories of a Norwegian Childhood

There is a rumour that Tilly’s grandmother bought the beloved Island of Smaholmene in Norway in exchange for a mink coat. Many legends abound about her wayward, free, nudist, grandmother who had a figure to die for. Three generations of women have adored, protected and saved the island. Tilly tells us eloquently the history of the island  and how she and her then boyfriend spent time holed up in silence and cold. And the  bleakness of living in a virtual fridge – Smaholmene Island in winter.

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Island Summers

Mor-Mor Grandmother & free spirit

Mor-mor and her sister 1930s

Tilly’s Mother – Fishergirl

Tilly’s Island Smaholmene in the 80s

Tilly outside the Honeymoon Room