After reading the biography of Hungarian film maker Alexander Korda, who brought The Scarlet Pimpernel to the silver screen for the first time, I thought I should probably get around to the author's autobiography too. Baroness Emma Orczy came from the opposite side of the tracks to Korda, born into a life of privilege, before her family were forced to leave Hungary after a 'peasant uprising' in the 1860s. They finally settled in London, and the Baroness became a lifelong Anglophile, marrying English artist Montagu Barstow. Sound familiar? Try French-born Marguerite St Just fleeing the French Revolution to marry the quintessential English gentleman Sir Percy Blakeney!

The Baroness was a product of her generation and her upbringing, full of little prejudices and snobbery, but her rambling autobiography is so quaint - she believed that her life was mapped out by God, including the Scarlet Pimpernel, and that the days when women wore caps inside ('Yes, Madam 1946, a cap!') were more romantic - that I couldn't help but like her. She admits to having 'an inferiority complex' - 'I was not pretty or dashing. I was dull, I was shy' - and been drawn to the beauty and popularity of others. I've always thought that Lady Blakeney must be a 'Mary Sue' type character, but after reading Orczy's opinion of herself, I don't think that she would ever have wanted to be like Marguerite - beautiful, glamorous, feted by all - though she might have wished she was friends with her. In a way, that's what she achieved, because characters, Orczy writes, are the most important part of a story - 'They were more real and more vivid to me than the friends of this world'.

Although The Scarlet Pimpernel, written as a play and a novel, is the Baroness' most famous creation, she actually penned many other titles. Her first published work was The Emperor's Candlesticks (1899) and she also wrote a detective story, The Old Man in the Corner, botching one crucial detail of Scottish legal practice! This oversight, however, taught her a lesson for the future: research, research, research! And despite her less than popular stance on the French Revolution, this she did - the Scarlet Pimpernel novels are full of factual gems, making the romance and the adventure all the more exciting.

Baroness Orczy moved to Monte Carlo, where her husband sadly died in 1943. After a struggle to return 'home' to England, she followed after him four years later, but the Scarlet Pimpernel and her other works live on. I would only recommend hunting down second-hand copies of this autobiography (mine came complete with half an ancient ticket stub for London Transport!) for die-hard fans of the Baroness and her novels. She doesn't even write that much about Sir Percy, bar the conception, play, and film (Leslie Howard was too short, and Fred Terry will always be her ideal Sir Percy), so unless reading about late Victorian fashion, Monte Carlo and a visit to Canada are of any interest, even aficionados might want to think twice! Entertaining in parts, and some lovely illustrations, though. ( )