BAILEY, Rosemary 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born 1953, in Yorkshire, England; married Barry Miles (a biographer); children: Theo (son). Education: Attended Bristol University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Corbiac, France. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Transworld Publishers, 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, England.

CAREER:

Journalist, travel writer, and author.

WRITINGS:

Scarlet Ribbons: A Priest with AIDS, Serpent's Tail (London, England), 1997.

The National Geographic Traveler: France, National Geographic Society (Washington, DC), 1999.

Life in a Postcard: Escape to the French Pyrenees, Bantam UK/Trafalgar (London, England), 2002.

The Man Who Married a Mountain: A Journey through the Pyrenees, Transworld (London, England), 2005.

EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTOR, WITH OTHERS

Tuscany ("Insight Guides" series), principal photography by Albano Guatti and Patrizia Giancotti, APA (London, England), 1990.

Loire Valley ("Insight Guides" series), photography by Lyle Lawson, APA (London England), 1991.

Burgundy ("Insight Guides" series), photography by Lyle Lawson, APA (London, England), 1992, updated edition, 2000.

Cote d'Azur ("Insight Guides" series), principal photography by Catherine Karnow and Douglas Corrance, APA (London, England), 1992.

Eyewitness Travel Guide to France, Dorling Kindersley Publishing (London, England), 1998.

The French Riviera ("Insight Guides" series), 2nd edition, photography by Lyle Lawson, APA (Singapore), 1999.

Gascony and the Pyrenees, updated edition, Cadogan Guides (London, England), 2001.

Also editor of and contributor to Southwest France ("Insight Guides" series) and Time Out South of France.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rosemary Bailey is best known for writing and editing several travel guides to European destinations. She has also produced a memoir of her life in a rural French village and a moving account of the life and death of her brother, an Anglican priest who died of AIDS.

Bailey's travel guides, a number of them written for the "Insight Guides" series, are profusely illustrated with maps and pictures. The guides are filled with useful information about regions such as Tuscany, Burgundy, and the Cote d'Azur. A reviewer for Library Journal said that Bailey's National Geographic Traveler: France has a "compact format ideal for taking along on a trip."

Bailey departed from her usual subject matter in Scarlet Ribbons: A Priest with AIDS, a tribute to her brother's ministry and his courageous fight against illness and societal misunderstanding. Simon Bailey, a gay priest in the Church of England, continued to perform his evangelical duties close to the day of his death. His sister recounts Simon's struggle to decide to reveal his illness and the effect his candor had on friends, family, the press, and the church hierarchy. A critic for Library Journal stated, "The ambiguities of Simon's life that the author preserves in her memorial of him will deepen and extend the impression he leaves." In the Observer, Emily Ormond wrote that "the dignity [Bailey] discovers both in Simon and in all those who loved and supported him is inspiring." Malcolm Boyd in the Lambda Book Report concluded that the book "has earmarks of a classic work in its genre. This is because is it unabashedly honest."

In a lighter vein, Bailey also produced Life in a Postcard: Escape to the French Pyrenees, an account of her life in French Catalonia beginning in 1988. She and her husband embarked on the painstaking restoration of an old monastery that would become their home. The book is full of interesting anecdotes about local villagers, cuisine, and customs. A Kirkus Reviews critic pointed out that "there's no danger of sentimentality" in the book, although it is "very human in scale, concerns, and aspirations: the kind of story that could light a fire under a reader's dream of flight to the warm south."

In The Man Who Married a Mountain: A Journey through the Pyrenees, Bailey combines travel memoir and biography in her account of nineteenth-century explorer and mountaineer Count Henry Russell-Killough. He spent a lifetime climbing through the Pyrenees and developed such a passion for the Vignemale—one of the tallest peaks in the range—that he dug out caves to enable him to live there for long periods of time at the highest possible altitude. He was finally granted a lease on the summit so that he could symbolically marry the mountain.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, June 5, 1998, review of Scarlet Ribbons: A Priest with AIDS, p. 860; February 15, 2003, review of Life in a Postcard: Escape to the French Pyrenees, p. 281.

Lambda Book Report, February, 1999, Malcolm Boyd, review of Scarlet Ribbons, p. 14.

Library Journal, July, 1998, John R. Leech, review of Scarlet Ribbons, p. 95; July, 1999, Linda M. Kaufmann, review of The National Geographic Traveler: France, p. 118; May 15, 2003, George M. Jenks, review of Life in a Postcard, p. 112.

Observer (London), November 9, 1997, Emily Ormond, review of Scarlet Ribbons, p. 18.