You'll find Anita's portrait in pastel
hanging on the main stairs. The eldest child of Sir Shane and
Marjorie Leslie, Anita became a famed biographer just like her
father. Her books are delightfully readable perhaps because she
wrote them living on a simple diet of smoked salmon and champagne.
Anita joined the Motor Transport Corps when the war came in 1939
and drove ambulances through the African, Italian and French
campaigns. She rescued wounded French soldiers from behind enemy
lines, and brought home French prisoners from the terrible underground
Nordhausen concentration camp where they were building V1 and
V2 rockets. At the end of the war, General de Gaulle awarded
her two Croix de Guerre for her courage. She also smuggled herself
in the boot of General Alexander's car so that she could illegally
attend the Potsdam Conference between Churchill, Roosevelt and
Stalin.
After the war, she took over Castle Leslie from her brother Jack,
and brought and restored the 15th Century ruin Oranmore Castle
in Galway. In 1963, she passed Castle Leslie over to her brother
Desmond, Sammy's father.
When she died in 1985 and was buried under the great trees on
the far side of the lake. As her coffin was lowered, she sent
a 100mph whirlwind across the lake to signal her safe arrival
on that 'other shore'.
Also in Anita's Room: the Pennsylvania Dutch sideboard is adorned
with the self portraits and very biblical names of the Honeybourne
family. The adjoining psychedelic bathroom was painted in 1970
by some visiting hippies who thought Castle Leslie was a 'cool
scene'. |
