Richard and Isabel Burton: This was the chapter that I most looked forward to, having had a fascination with especially Richard Burton for a long while, because of his translation of One Thousand and One Nights. Their chapter lived up to my expectations. One of these days I'm going to read a full length biography on them both. In May 1989 Radner was taken to a CAT scan and fought the sedation as she was terrified she would not wake up again.

Oscar Wilde love quote “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” Next we learn about Jane Digby, a beautiful aristocrat who had a string of scandalous romances that took her from England to France to Germany to Greece, and who finally found stability and contentment as the wife of a Bedouin tribesman. During the filming of Hanky Panky the pair remained friends, but when Radner officially divorced her husband in 1982 they instantly reconnected and became inseparable. Known as the two funniest actors of 20th century Hollywood, fans were delighted when Radner and Wilder announced their relationship. That the French odalisque was “the inspiration and guiding force behind various political intrigues stretching far beyond the Seraglio’s walls or even the Turkish frontiers” is, as the writer freely concords, conjecture. Nonetheless, a letter from Selim to Louis XVI, contemptuously ignored at Versailles, could only have had one author and Mahmud once established as the Shadow of Allah on Earth was, still is, known as The Reformer, even if all the barbarous colour of the Ottoman Empire disappeared for ever. That she ‘loved’ the father of her child, a rigidly conservative and sometimes brutal old man whom she could rarely have seen, is extremely unlikely though perhaps in a way he did her. Perhaps she was grateful, which will do well enough; as the Sultan’s mother she wielded almost complete power from within, demonstrating a Creole ruthlessness of her own. In her magnificent suite, knowing nothing until Napoleon’s intervention in Turkish affairs of the Revolution or her cousin’s rise to Empress, she recreated the salons of the French eighteenth century and by example and influence dragged Turkey into a sort of Westernisation for better or for worse.Wilder became a counsellor for Radner as he was twice-divorced and had plenty of advice to depart on the actress who was 13 years his junior. The third study goes inside the seraglio where Aimee Dubucq De Rivery, cousin of Josephine of Napoleonic fame, was spirited when her ship was taken over. She learned much of politics from the inside machinations among the women and their respective sons in line for the rule as Sultan, and seems to have had quite an influence on middle-eastern foreign affairs through her connections before her son became a reformer during his reign. Physicians immediately enrolled the actress in chemotherapy but her treatments were often bombarded by reporters looking for information on her condition and to speak to her husband.

Aimée du Buc de Rivéry: One of my favourite chapters in the book. We know that she disappeared at sea, but there is a prevailing legend that she was captured at sea, and that she supposedly spent the rest of her life in the harem of the Ottoman Empire. According to current historians, it's not been substantiated whether or not those two women are one and the same. Regardless, Lesley Blanch tells you this legendary story most engagingly. I gave this book only three stars because the writing was overdone, especially on the first two biographies. Perhaps it is just my impatience with the subjects or my impatience with the writing, but at times I found the book tedious. But I must credit these four women for striking out and making their own way at a time when that was very difficult. At 15, I was enthralled by the dashing adventures of these four Victorian women who defied the boredom of their culturally prescribed lives to escape to the Middle East. The book is exciting and conversational enough to entice a surly teenager into loving it, even one who would rather have been dancing in discos than digging in deserts. Isabelle even cross-dressed in England and in the Sahara, a fact which moved me.

A friend described the couple as “constant honeymooners” five years after their wedding but no one knew the troubles that awaited. She was obviously a strong character as she made a very good marriage in the end, all within the confines of the seraglio. But what fascinated me was the hierarchy in the luxury of the harem. The four favourite wives, and more so if they had a son, lived splendid rich lives with access outside their gilded cages.

Doctors believed the symptoms were partly connected to her depression as they could not find anything wrong with her stomach.

While it seemed this was the end of her troubles, Radner’s legs started shaking uncontrollably, with severe fevers and bloating plaguing the actress around her menstrual cycle. In her memoir, Radner declared: “Now I had Epstein-Barr virus and mittelschmerz. Fitting diseases for the Queen of Neurosis.” Jane Digby: What a fascinating woman! Not always a fan of her choices, though. She travelled a great deal throughout her life. One of the places she spent time in was Paris, where she met Balzac, who based one of his characters on her (Lady Arabelle Dudley in Le Lys dans la vallée). Her years in the Syrian desert as the wife of Sheik Abdul Madjuel El Mezrab was especially interesting to me. Overall, an incredibly eventful journey that I loved reading. Lesley Blanch, who died at the age of 103 in 2007, must be the very last of the great Bohemians. She wrote about fashion and interior design for Vogue and published books celebrating her passion for Russia and the Balkans. This new compilation has been put together by her god-daughter and includes some of Blanch’s travel writing, a retrospective memoir of her Edwardian childhood and (previously published only in French) the story of her marriage to the Russian-French soldier-diplomat and writer Romain Gary. As her symptoms worsened she was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus, a common illness that causes fatigue.

The Haunted Honeymoon actress suffered two miscarriages and IVF also proved to be pointless as the star was told she was infertile. Jane Digby's story is her succession of husbands, before she married Sheikh Abdul Medjuel El Mezrab is Syria. He was twenty years her junior, but she remained married to him for thirty years. She lived part of the year in Bedouin tents, the other in the city of Homs. 1807 - 1881.Aimée Dubucq de Rivery: A very innocent young girl returning from a convent school in Nantes to her home in Martinique, was captured by corsairs and ended up in Constantinople as a gift to the Caliph of the Faithful, Padishar of the Barbary States, Shadow of the Prophet upon Earth, the Sultan Abul l Hamid I – Aimée’s fate. Her god-daughter calls her “ a Sheherezade figure”. Blanch romanticises in vivid detail her girlhood in the years leading up to World War One. She had a baby by an Italian soldier, gave it up for adoption and never mentions it again. I couldn’t decide whether she was heartbroken or heartless. Her first teenage impression of Florence was that it was “ forbidding”; Venice was “ draughty”. So secondly we learn a little more about Jane Digby El Mezrab, who was reasonably well-known to the Burton’s having married her last husband in Syria before the couple arrived together in Damascus. This life is a series of closely-linked monogamous relationships, some involving marriage, and children, but not necessarily all having either characteristic. This was a highly intelligent and educated woman who challenged herself beyond any perceived restrictions, and earned great respect among the people she eventually resided with in the desert.