Elisabeth Russell Taylor (1930–2020)

Elisabeth Russell Taylor was born in London, a daughter of Sidney Lewsen, a physician, and his wife, Peggy (née Davidson), and grew up in a Jewish intellectual milieu. She attended Francis Holland school and the Garden school in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
She left home for an early marriage to Freddie Silberman, managing director of the luxury leather goods company LS Mayer, later Launer of London. The marriage produced a son but was short-lived. On a trip to Paris, she met Marcel Van Thienen, then a composer of musique concrète and later a sculptor, and went to live with him. That relationship ended in 1954 and Elisabeth returned to London, moving in bohemian circles.

With novelist Peter Vansittart, she travelled by bus to Russia. In 1957, she remarried to Russell Taylor, a student at Oxford University. Even after their divorce, she kept both of his names for the rest of her life. In 1962, she met painter and stained-glass artist Tom Fairs, and went to live with him; they married in 1987. With Tom's encouragement, Elisabeth took a degree in English literature at King’s College London and began to write in middle age. She was the author of six novels, three short story collections, four books for children, five works of nonfiction, and numerous reviews and articles. In addition, she wrote film treatments for London Films and Arena Films, and her stories were broadcast on BBC Radio 4.