Born: 21 November 1914, United Kingdom
Died: 5 November 1985
Country most active: International
Also known as: Anne Theodosia Moria
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Leslie, Anita (Anne Theodosia Moria) (1914–85), biographer, was born 21 November 1914, in Talbot Square, London, the eldest child and only daughter of the author Sir (John Randolph) Shane Leslie of Castle Leslie, Glaslough, Co. Monaghan, a nephew of Lady Randolph Churchill, and Marjorie Leslie (née Ide), an American-born socialite. Her early years were spent in England, with her American relatives in Vermont and Long Island, and (from 1919) on extended and regular visits to her father’s ancestral home in Monaghan, where she appears to have been extremely happy. She received a patchy but expensive education from as many as fourteen governesses and at seven schools in Britain and France, before making her debut in 1933. This was followed by a brief career on the stage with the Cochran Young Ladies dancing troupe. In 1936 she entered into a disastrous marriage with a Russian exile, Colonel Paul Rodzainco, a horse trainer thirty years her senior. They parted in 1939, by which time she had turned to writing. Her first book, a biography of Rodin, was published in that year.
Frustrated by the endless round of socialising in London, Leslie joined the mechanised transport corps in 1940 and served with it in South Africa and the Middle East. She later worked as the editor of the British services paper the Eastern Times in Beirut and with the British Red Cross in Italy. In 1944 she volunteered for the French army as an ambulance driver; she crossed the Rhine with the 1st French armoured division and later participated in the allied advance on Berlin. She was awarded the croix de guerre for bravery in February 1945. She met her second husband, Commander William King (who later became well known as the solo sailor Bill Leslie-King) of Oranmore castle, Co. Galway, while serving in the Middle East. After her first marriage was annulled in 1948, they were married in January 1949. They had one son and one daughter.
In the period after the war Leslie established herself as a best-selling author. Following on from the success of her acclaimed war memoirs, Train to nowhere (1946), she produced numerous informed and entertaining biographies, several of which concerned the notable members of her own family – The fabulous Leonard Jerome (1954), Lady Randolph Churchill (1969), Cousin Clare (1976), and Cousin Randolph (1985). Among her other successes were Edwardians in love (1972) and her autobiographies, The gilt and the gingerbread (1981) and A story half told (1983), in which she captures the social life and attitudes of the British aristocracy in the 1930s and 1940s. Leslie died 5 November 1985 at Oranmore castle.