WILSON, Mary.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

New Poems. First edition, presentation copy to Marcia Falkender, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Marcia, with love from Mary. October 1979". Falkender was the political secretary and key aide to Mary's husband, Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The book was acquired from her estate.Harold Wilson and Marcia Falkender were long rumoured to be lovers, but Mary dismissed the rumours and was very close to Marcia. "Mary suggested that such allegations were beneath contempt... Certainly the closeness between the two women, as they helped sustain each other in increasing old age, demonstrated a sincere friendship and Mary spoke to friends of the gratitude she felt for the help she had been given by her husband's former adviser precisely because of her own disdain for politics and Falkender's compensating political professionalism" (Guardian obituary, 7 June 2018).This was Mary Wilson's second poetry collection, following Selected Poems of 1970. "Although some critics sneered, she was evidently able to speak to a wide audience. As Edna Healey observed, her poems gave 'great pleasure to many. Georgian in tone, with a simple directness, they are often deeply moving'" (ODNB).

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