Obituary: Joan Haslip

Joan Haslip, writer: born 27 February 1912; sub-editor, London Mercury 1929-39; editor, Italian Section, European Service, BBC 1941-45; FRSL 1958; died Bellosguardo, Tuscany 19 June 1994.

BIOGRAPHY, good biography, is a noble calling . Joan Haslip provided her own reasons for following its call in two remarks. The first: 'I want to be amused' (or she may have used some less detached and remote word, since remoteness was not at all her cup of tea, in spite of the highly inconvenient inaccessibility of her home outside Florence). The second explains what she meant by the first: 'People are what amuse me, or keep me going.' And that is why, whenever she felt she was in need of it, she gave a very entertaining party; and biographies are, after all, studies of people.

Haslip's biographies reached the very elevated standard she aimed for, and she was highly professional, often seeking out unpublished sources in their original language and always concerned with what lay beneath the surface of her characters. Her earthiness and realism gave the proper bite of historical biography to romantic subjects. Theyincluded Lady Hester Stanhope (1934), Parnell (1936), Lucrezia Borgia (1954), Abdul Hamid (1958), the Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1965), Catherine the Great (1976), Franz Josef and Frau Schratt (The Empress and the Actress, 1982), Marie Antoinette (1987), and Madame Du Barry (1991). Her studies of Elizabeth of Austria ('The Lonely Empress') and Marie Antoinette were translated into 10 languages. And at the end of her life she was working on a study of Napoleon's sisters.

Joan Haslip's father was of Irish descent, and one of the original planners of the National Health Service, and her mother Austrian. From a young age Joan was very much a European figure, speaking several languages and travelling widely. But above all, although as much Irish as English, she was the supreme Anglo-Florentine. Nowadays, the British Consulate and the British Institute keep the flag flying but there are not so many Anglo-Florentines as there were: in Florence itself, they are thin on the ground, and in the Chianti area they are for the most part elderly. But like the late Harold Acton, Haslip was as much Florentine as British. She grew up in Florence and latterly lived, for many years, at Bellosguardo, on a hill just to the south of the Arno. The remoteness of the house and the fact that she did not have a car never prevented her from maintaining a lively social life with old friends in the area.

Haslip was a sub-editor, from 1929 to 1939, at the London Mercury, to which she contributed reviews and a number of other pieces, including some in verse. And she began her career as an author at this time by writing two novels, Out of Focus (1931) and Grandfather Steps (1932). Then, from 1941 to 1945 she was an editor in the Italian Section of European Service of the BBC. For 36 years she was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; she also lectured on Italian subjects far and wide.

All that is, certainly, relevant to our knowledge of Joan, but what I shall chiefly remember her for is her excellent company. Her conversation let off sparks that made her exceptional and inimitable. There was no one else like her; and Tuscany will never be the same place again.

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