| Lisa St Aubin de Terán | |
| Birth Name: | Lisa Rynveld |
| Birth Date: | 2 October 1953 |
| Nationality: | British |
| Education: | James Allen's Girls' School |
| Genre: | Novels, Autobiographical fiction |
| Subjects: | --> |
| Notable Works: | Keepers of the House The Slow Train to Milan |
| Spouse: | Jaime Terán George MacBeth Robbie Duff Scott |
| Partners: | --> |
| Children: | Iseult (with Jaime Terán) Alexander (with George MacBeth) Florence (with Robbie Duff Scott) |
| Relatives: | Jan Carew (father) |
| Awards: | Somerset Maugham Award John Llewellyn Rhys Prize |
Lisa St Aubin de Terán (born 2 October 1953) is an English novelist, writer of autobiographical fictions, and memoirist. Her father was the Guyanese writer and academic Jan Carew.[1]
Lisa St Aubin de Terán was born in 1953 to Joan Mary Murray (née St Aubin) and Jan Rynveld Carew[2] and was brought up in Clapham in South London. She attended James Allen's Girls' School. Her memoir Hacienda (1998) describes how she fell into a whirlwind first marriage at the age of 16 to an exiled Venezuelan aristocrat and bank robber, Jaime Terán,[3] and lived for seven years at a remote farm in the Andean region of Venezuela.[4] She fled both the marriage and Venezuela when he suggested that she and their infant daughter should join him in a suicide pact.
After returning to Britain, she married her second husband, the Scottish poet and novelist George MacBeth in 1982. It was also in that year she published her first novel, Keepers of the House, winning her the Somerset Maugham Award and a place on Grantas list of "Best of Young British Novelists" (1983, issue #7). The Slow Train to Milan, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, followed in 1983. In the same year, she moved to Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalen in Norfolk. After her second marriage broke down, she left to live in Italy.[5]
Her third husband was the painter Robbie Duff Scott, whom she had first met when George MacBeth asked him to paint a portrait of her. After marrying in 1989, she and Duff Scott moved to Umbria, her life there being described in Venice: The Four Seasons (1992) and A Valley in Italy (1994). In 1994, she presented "Santos to Santa Cruz", an episode of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys, about travelling from Brazil to Bolivia,[6] and wrote an accompanying article for The Times.[7] Later in 1998, she visited Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore for an episode of the BBC Radio 4 documentary The Off Season.[8]
In 2001, Duff Scott and de Terán separated and by 2003 de Terán had moved to Amsterdam and set up her own film production company called Radiant Pictures, through which she met her new partner, Dutch cameraman, Mees van Deth.[9] A year later, the couple moved to in Mossuril, Nampula Province, Mozambique.[10] [11]
Lisa St Aubin de Terán has three children, including by her first husband a daughter, Iseult Teran, who is also a novelist.
In 2004, Lisa St Aubin de Terán established The Terán Foundation to help poor villages in northern Mozambique.[12] She writes about this phase of her life in Mozambique Mysteries (2007).[13] The Terán Foundation's first project, the College of Tourism and Agriculture (CTCA) in Cabaceira Grande, operated between 2004 and 2010, before it was sold back to the government. A second restaurant and guest house, Sunset Boulevard, functions on a non-profit basis as a training facility in Mossuril. The third building project, The Leopard Spot, was earmarked for construction in Milange, on the border with Malawi.
| Year | Work | Award | Result | Ref. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Keepers of the House | Somerset Maugham Award | [14] | ||
| 1983 | Poetry | ||||
| 1983 | The Slow Train to Milan | John Llewellyn Rhys Prize | [15] |
In addition to her books, Lisa St Aubin de Terán has written, primarily as a travel journalist, for The Observer, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, The New York Times, The Mail on Sunday, New Statesman, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan among other publications.
| Year | Title | Publisher | Genre | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | The Streak | Martin Booth | Poem | Limited edition of 125 copies. (6 pp.) | |
| 1982 | Keepers of the House | Jonathan Cape / Harper and Row | Novel | Published in the US with the title The Long Way Home). Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award | |
| 1983 | The Slow Train to Milan | Jonathan Cape | Novel | Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Reviewed in The Sunday Times[16] | |
| 1984 | The Tiger | Jonathan Cape | Novel | Reviewed in The Times[17] and The Sunday Times[18] | |
| 1985 | The High Place | Jonathan Cape | Poetry | ||
| 1986 | "I hate the cinema" | The Irish Times | Short story | 11 August 1986: p. 13 | |
| 1986 | The Bay of Silence | Jonathan Cape | Novel | ||
| 1987 | Black Idol | Jonathan Cape | Novel | Reviewed in The Independent[19] | |
| 1989 | The Marble Mountain and other stories | Jonathan Cape | Short stories | Reviewed in The Sunday Telegraph[20] | |
| 1989 | Off the Rails: Memoirs of a Train Addict | Bloomsbury | Memoir | Reviewed in The Sunday Times,[21] The Telegraph[22] and The Independent[23] | |
| 1989 | Landscape in Italy | Pavilion | Pictorial | Photographs by John Ferro Sims | |
| 1989 | Indiscreet Journeys: Stories of Women on the Road | Virago Press | Anthology | Editor | |
| 1990 | Joanna | Virago Press | Novel | Reviewed in The Times,[24] The Sunday Times,[25] The Daily Telegraph,[26] The Independent[27] and The Independent on Sunday[28] | |
| 1991 | Venice: The Four Seasons | Pavilion | Travelogue | Photographs by Mick Lindberg | |
| 1992 | Nocturne | Hamish Hamilton | Novel | Reviewed in The Sunday Times[29] | |
| 1994 | A Valley in Italy: Confessions of a House Addict | Hamish Hamilton / HarperCollins | Memoir | Published in the US as A Valley in Italy: The Many Seasons of a Villa in Umbria. Reviewed in The Independent on Sunday[30] | |
| 1997 | The Hacienda: My Venezuelan Years | Virago Press | Memoir | Reviewed in The Daily Telegraph[31] and The Independent[32] | |
| 1997 | The Palace | Macmillan | Novel | Reviewed in The Sunday Times[33] and The Independent[34] | |
| 1998 | Virago Book of Wanderlust and Dreams | Virago Press | Anthology | Editor | |
| 1999 | Southpaw | Virago Press | Short stories | ||
| 2000 | Elements of Italy | Virago Press | Anthology | Editor | |
| 2002 | Memory Maps | Virago Press | Memoir | Reviewed in The Times[35] | |
| 2005 | Otto | Virago Press / Harper Perennial | Novel | Published in the US with the title Swallowing Stones. Reviewed in The Times,[36] The Irish Times,[37] The Guardian[38] and The Independent[39] | |
| 2007 | Mozambique Mysteries | Virago Press | Memoir | Reviewed in The Independent[40] |
| Year | Title | Publisher | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | "Hall of mirrors" | The Guardian | 17 October 1985: p. 27 (book review) | |
| 1986 | "Leftover passion" | New Statesman | 12 December 1986: p. 29–30 (book review) | |
| 1988 | "My Australia" | The Independent | 19 November 1988: pp. 76–82 (illustrated by Madeleine Thompson) | |
| 1989 | "Home on the Rio della Guerra" | The Sunday Times | 22 January 1989: p. 7 (s5) | |
| 1992 | "Ranks of Tuscany" | The Guardian | 21 June 1992: p. 24 (book reviews) | |
| 1992 | "A Twitch of Curtains in Tuscany" | The Guardian | 4 June 1992: p. 27 (book reviews) | |
| 1993 | "A rich sauce of eccentricity" | The Sunday Times | 28 February 1993: p. VII. (restaurant review) | |
| 1994 | "Back Tracking" | The Times | 5 February 1994: p. 35(s2). (accompaniment to Great Railway Journeys) | |
| 1994 | "Jessie Kesson" | The Independent | 28 September 1994: p. 12. (obituary) | |
| 1996 | "Introduction" | Virago Press | Introduction to Pirates at Play by Violet Trefusis | |
| 1997 | "My husband, the lost man" | The Daily Telegraph | 17 May 1997: pp. 1–2 | |
| 1997 | "The trip of the iceberg" | The Independent | 7 June 1997: p. 6. (book review) | |
| 1998 | "My Hols" | The Sunday Times | 31 May 1998: p. 18(s4) | |
| 1999 | "Sweet life on sugar island: A place in the sun" | The Mail on Sunday | 21 March 1999: p. 55 | |
| 1999 | "Feasts and fantasies from East to West" | The Sunday Telegraph | 2 May 1999: p. 24 | |
| 1999 | "Where there's a villa, there's a way" | The New York Times | 7 November 1999: pp. 95 & 104 (magazine) | |
| 2000 | "Checkered past" | The New York Times | Fall 2000: pp. 78–84 (magazine) | |
| 2000 | "The house of jasmine" | The Guardian | 7 August 2000: p. B6 | |
| 2002 | "Grand tours: Tales from Thailand's riverbanks" | The Independent | 14 July 2002: p. 24 (Foreign Edition) | |
| 2005 | "Heroes & Villains: Graça Machel" | The Independent | 1 January 2005: p. 46 | |
| 2005 | "My first husband, the bank robber" | The Times | 9 February 2005: p. 11(s) | |
| 2005 | "Palladian glory: it's the passion that moves me" | The Sunday Times | 27 February 2005: pp. 10–11 | |
| 2005 | "You can't dodge the redraft" | The Guardian | 23 April 2005: p. 34 | |
| 2005 | "Journey to the interior" | The Guardian | 9 July 2005: p. 36 | |
| 2006 | "Foreword" | Virago Press | Foreword to Rome: A cultural and literary companion by J. Boardman | |
| 2007–2013 | Onze Wereld | Monthly column in Dutch magazine[41] |
"A Whirlwind Affair" (interview on the BBC World Service in 2002)