Rowena Farre

Rowena Farre was born Daphne Lois Macready in India, where her father served as a medical officer in the British Army. Her first book, Seal Morning, was a national bestseller and piqued the public interest in her life. Uncomfortable with the attention she disappeared for three years, much to the aggravation of her publisher who resorted to printing messages in the personal column of The Times in an attempt to contact her. A nomad living an unsettled and restless life, after A Time from the World she only published one more book, The Beckoning Land, which tells the story of a spiritual pilgrimage to India – the country had a double resonance for her as the place of her childhood and where she believed the Gypsies had first come from.

Rowena Farre died in 1979, aged 57.