Background
Lorna, her six sisters and her two brothers grew up in the bleak surroundings of the Black Country at Oakeswell Hall, Wednesbury, and then became prominent in the Bohemian Bloomsbury set in London between the two world wars.
Lorna, her six sisters and her two brothers grew up in the bleak surroundings of the Black Country at Oakeswell Hall, Wednesbury, and then became prominent in the Bohemian Bloomsbury set in London between the two world wars.
Lorna in particular had affairs with the poet Laurie Lee and the painter Lucian Freud. Her character may be summed up in this quotation from Cressida Connolly:
Ernest Wishart founded the publisher Wishart & Company, which soon became Lawrence and Wishart, which became the publishing house of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in collaboration with Douglas Garman, the party"s Education Secretary. She gave birth to Laurie Lee"s daughter Yasmin in February 1939 and modelled for several pictures by Lucian Freud during her affair with him.
She also brought him objects such as a dead heron and a zebra head for him to insert in his paintings.
Both Lee and Freud went on to marry nieces of Lorna"s, respectively Kathy Polge and Kitty Garman. Lorna Wishart died on 12 January 2000 having spent her final years as part of the Roman Catholic community around Arundel in West Sussex.