This book is a memoir of the interesting and eclectic life of Robin Dalton. The book starts out detailing her life as a young single women, then as a divorcee during wartime, and eventually as a mother and widower. We hear of her relationships with famous men, her encounters with royalty, and her how various chance events shape her life after the war.

At times I found this book to be really engaging. In certain chapters you could tell that the author was really excited about what she was writing because she would go in to great detail about an event or person. At other times events were rushed through in a way that caused me to have to go back and reread segments to figure out what was going on. The story also jumps around a bit when introducing new people to the narrative.

It's not a book I would necessarily add to my list of recommendations, but it was an interesting read.

I found this book to be a little disappointing. From the synopsis I expected so much more.

From the engaging writing I am sure Robin Dalton has the ability to write well and with success. Sadly, I did not find this in One leg over, a memoir of her life as a woman and her liaisons with men.
I found the missed opportunities a little tedious and the mismanagement of her inheritance and good fortune unsettling. I can see the original concept in a world overtaken by war and the unease of untimely death but I lament the squandering of so much through a lack of maturity. Perhaps this was due to the times she lived through but it is lost in her life story by a delight in pleasure and wastefulness. Perhaps as she looks back this is laced in regret but I just read of missed chances and thoughtless acts.
I also tired quickly of the name dropping and lack of tangible profit from such encounters.
I felt I only got to know the author through her second marriage and some of the maturity that she felt followed was also blessed with her children.
If I were read something else from this author it would be in such more honest times and her struggles as a single patent.
In a man's world she certainly demonstrated an ability to survive and find gainful employment but I sense a certain sadness of unfulfilled moments and paths not followed.
I guess she is a survivor at 95 and must have led a wonderful life. It is frustrating to me that this book rarely demonstrates that to me or endears me to the author.

Review was declined. Thank you for the opportunity.

4★
Robin Dalton knew everybody worth knowing in society and politics in post-war Britain, Australia, and a fair bit of America. Born in Australia, she partied, flirted, wined, dined and danced with the royals, the wealthy, the famous. She is boastful to the max - but she has much to be boastful about!

She had three fiancés at the same time . . . at least she thinks she accepted the third fellow after the first two had returned to London (separately, of course). But that's understandable - he was returning to Shanghai, and she thought that sounded like fun!

“One barely had time to dry tears before the British Navy arrived. There were no more nylons or candy: instead we had cocktails aboard the war ships, the American ships having been ‘dry’. My current American fiancé being trapped back home in Boston, I acquired a British one.”

I was really angry with her for the first third of the book. She played fast and loose with men’s hearts, broke quite a few, and used her charms to win all sorts of favours. And she’s wrong here:

“The four major elements in their stories have shifted in prominence during my long lifetime. Now it is sex; if lucky, love; even luckier, romance; possibly respect—the first squeezing the last almost out of existence, having little relevance to it.”

First, she tells us that in her day, it was all about romance and falling in love. And yet . . . and yet . . . she goes on to say:

“My own good memories continued in that I lived, aged eighteen to twenty-four, through a world at war when the boys and young men we met were all, briefly, on leave, with the unspoken fear that they might never return. Sometimes, when sleepless, I amuse myself with trying to remember those lovers—sometimes taken to bed on a first encounter—counting on both hands in swift rotation; one or two forgotten and having to be slipped in later.”

After all these years, knowing men as well as she does, she still convinces herself it was all pure romance. She really does idealise what young men after WW2 were thinking as they snuggled with their partners on the dance floor.

“But it is not the somewhat irrelevant sexual act I remember. It is the preliminary romantic music as we clasped each other on the dance floor or the deep gaze over a supper table—magic—one was in love. The words of the tunes [love songs]. . . were like electric signals between one and the boy of the night: surely he, too, was thinking that those words were written just for the two of you—an electronic purveyor of his emotions.”

Believe me, they were thinking about that “irrelevant” act, I’m sure, and maybe hoping the music would warm up the girls! As for her and her friends, they had one worry:

“. . . our chief dread was that their leaves would overlap. They seldom did. Enormous pleasure was then to be had from the exchange of passionate love letters, or those which got through the censors and the bombs.”

Enough of that. She followed two of her fiancés to London, juggled them and others, and continued her merry life. She did have an early, disastrous 5-month marriage to a bully, and her subsequent divorce made her unmarriageable for a lot of men connected to the royals or the Church.

One of her serious suitors, David “had agreed in late 1947 to be best man at the wedding of his cousin, Prince Philip, to Princess Elizabeth, and from being an unknown young naval officer he was thrust into the forefront of media attentions and consequently those of socially ambitious mothers.”

So his mother was looking for a better prospect for her son, but Robin hung onto him, all while dangling other fellows. She managed a coup by finding a wedding present for our now Queen Elizabeth. She happened to sit next to a businessman at a dinner party who told her proudly that he was making a revolutionary Deccola, one of the first-ever (maybe the first?) record player that change records automatically.

“By the end of dinner, I had procured, free, for David, the very first off the production line and the manufacturer had procured valuable publicity as it went on prominent display with the royal wedding presents.”

Early product placement! There’s no doubt she was a clever girl.

She mingled with Peter Ustinov, Jack Kennedy, (all the Kennedys), T.S. Eliot - I can’t begin to remember all the people, but the Thai royal family considered her extended family, to the point that the English approached her about spying on them. (She didn’t.)

When she met the serious love of her life, she says she couldn’t believe how quickly she grew up. This is when I began to like her. She still had numerous escapades, tragedy, children, living in a crumbling villa in Italy, - you name it, she experienced it. But all through her life, people have adopted her, made her their own, looked after her and her children.

I have concentrated only on the early, frivolous part of her memoir and not on her long and still colourful life after she ‘matured’. (She didn’t really!)

She worked, she succeeded, and at 95, I guess she’s got every right to enjoy her memories the way she wants to. I'm just sorry she thinks today's kids don't experience romance.

This certainly makes for colourful, entertaining reading. I just wish it had photos and an INDEX. There are so many names dropped, it would be like reading several years’ worth of the society pages (as they used to be known), except that she lived with all these people. This was her circle of friends.

I also wish I had been an adult then so I’d know more about the people she remembers. I felt the same way about Mark Twain’s autobiography – the people who would really appreciate this are all gone!

Thanks to NetGalley and Text Publishing for the copy for review from which I’ve quoted. Some quotes may have changed.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ecopy for my Kindle.
A memoir by a lady who at 95 yrs old looks back on her life which included 3 marriages, several loves and affairs, and a few wars. Not something I would normally read, so it was just ok for me.

One cannot help but think that afternoon tea with Robin Dalton would be a jaw dropping experience, what with the name dropping and titbits of information that she could introduce to the conversation. Dalton has lived an extraordinary life if this book is anything to go by, and some of the really interesting parts of her life were touched upon in only a paragraph or two, as if they were merely trivial parts to the story.
Originally from Sydney, Australia, Dalton moves to the UK in 1946, fitting in with high society and aristocratic types. The first two thirds of the book are give to the sharing of many varried tales of the people she shared life experiences with, both lovers and acquaintances. Although now, as with all memoirs, the significance of whom she interacted with is lost on the more modern readers. Her sense of adventure, her lack of comprehension of the value of money and her taste for living the good life all blend in together to make an interesting book.
The last third follows a more orderly path of her life and gives us an insight to a woman as tough and capable as she was daring and adventurous. Dalton is not afraid to use the female card to get what she wants and would probably bristle at the label or idea of being a feminist, of which she has no time for. She revels in her list of male conquests, with a list of lovers and marriage proposals as long as her arm.
This book speaks of a different life in a different time when the modern day rules we are hamstrung by didn't exist and what rules and regulations there were were not so restrictive. Not shying away from heart break, Dalton leaves the impression that she knew how to make the most of life and took every opportunity to seize life and live it to the full.
I eagerly await my invitation to afternoon tea.

Robin Dalton, an Austrailian who eventually moved to England. We are told of her life from being a young woman. Her relationships with famous men, Royalty and chance events all played there part in her life.

I found this quite an engaging memoir epically as the content is told by the 95 year old author. A nice light hearted insight into the lifestyle some women had before, during and after the war.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Text Publishing and the author Robin Dalton for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I like nothing better than reading a good autobiography, and the synopsis for this book sounded really good and was all set for a good read but the book did not deliver at all. You'd swear most of the book was made up given the major name dropping that took place! The book was very boring and nothing at all like I what it would be like and found myself struggling to stay awake.

Robin Dalton’s memoir of a life of privilege (though the reliability of income fluctuated) can be a little difficult to relate to. An Australian who moved to England post-Second World War she put herself at the heart of society. After her first less than happy marriage she pursued her freedom with fervour, putting pleasure at the heart of everything she did. There are echoes of the Mitfords in her society life, although Dalton is perhaps less engaging a character. The fluidity of the writing is not always at the same level – sometimes she perhaps gets too caught up in the story, leaving the reader struggling to keep pace. It is an interesting snapshot of a certain period of time for a certain class. There is also something admirable in Dalton’s irrepressible, vivacious character. She was also a devoted single mother after being widowed in a time when a woman had fewer options. It is certainly impressive how she overcame all the hurdles she faced with such good spirit. It is worth a look but would not be at the top of my recommendations list.

‘At ninety-five I have begun to dwell on the past rather than an increasingly less intriguing future.’

The cover picture drew my attention to this book, as did the title: a woman dressed in red, arm in arm with two men entitled ‘One Leg Over’? I was intrigued. And when I realised that the author was Robin Dalton, I wanted to read it straight away. It’s been years since I read ‘Aunts Up the Cross’ (her first book, published in 1965) and I’ve a reread in mind. I’m also about to read ‘My Relations’, a book Robin wrote when she was eight, and which was published in 2015 for the fist time.

Robin Dalton was born Robin Eakin in 1920. She grew up in Kings Cross in a large house with her parents, grand-parents and a great aunt. This is the experience which formed the basis for ‘Aunts Up the Cross’. Robin Dalton has lived in London since 1946, and she’s led an interesting life. In addition to being an author, she has been a television performer, worked in intelligence, been a literary agent and a film producer (‘Madame Souzatska’ (1988) starring Shirley Maclaine, ‘Country Life’ (1994) starring Greta Scacchi and Sam Neill, and ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ (1997) starring Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes.

‘One Leg Over’ is an account of Robin’s life. Of her disastrous first marriage in Sydney in 1940, which lasted a matter of months. Of her move to London and subsequent marriage to Emmet Dalton in 1953, which ended with his death during heart surgery at the age of thirty-three. By this time Robin had two small children, and had worked in intelligence for the Thai government. In 1963, Robin became a literary agent, and her list went grew to include four Booker Prize winners – David Storey, Bernice Rubens, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Iris Murdoch, as well as Margaret Drabble and Edna O’Brien. After twenty-five years as a literary agent, she established ‘Dalton Films’, a movie production company.

A busy woman! But the major focus of this book is on her love life, especially during the 1940s. As Robin
Dalton writes:

‘For the undamaged survivors the 1940s were a magical period.’

I guess it depended who you were and, relatively, how well-off.

But there are other elements as well, to make me think. Robin Dalton writes:

‘Before the war, girls and young women from the more privileged strata of society did not go out to work. Their goals were engagement and marriage, except for the tiny majority who went to a university. It is generally thought that the lives of women are far better now, but not being of feminist inclination, I am not too sure of this.’

Times have changed.

I found this an interesting account of Ms Dalton’s long and varied life. And I especially enjoyed her explanation of how she arrived at the book’s title.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Text Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

One Leg Over gives us a peek into the life of a spoiled self obsessed woman. Obviously she's the main character in her own story. You can wonder if some of the stiries are true. If they are then really I have no desire to read ir hear if this wonan again.

I have always been a lover of life stories and I was not disappointed in the least with 'One Leg Over' by Robin Dalton. At the respectable age of 95, this author has a lot of life to tell and she tells it well.
Ms. Dalton starts her story in her home land of Australia, touching briefly on her short marriage to her less than desirable first husband whom she divorced before moving away from her family to England and a life of great adventure.
We move quickly in this book through stories of short lived relationships, career changes and rubbing shoulders with Royals before settling on the things obviously more meaningful to Ms. Dalton, namely her time working as an intelligence agent for the Thai government and her second husband, Emmet Dalton, who tragically passed away aged 33 during heart surgery a few years into their happy marriage.
I was pleasantly surprised at the way this book was written, it felt almost conversational in tone; it was almost as though I was sitting with the author having it told to me. Ms. Dalton is very eloquent with words and doesn't ramble like many 95 year olds that I have met and for this I have great respect.
I would definitely give this book a read and I for one shall be keeping a look out for any other tales this author wishes to share.

Those who lived in London (and Paris) in the years following WWII seemed to live their lives on the brink--of danger, of penury--and yet they partied every night, slept with each other's spouses, ate at the Savoy Grill and drank champagne for breakfast. At least Robin Dalton's set did. She knew everyone from T.S. Elliot to Prince Philip to the Duchess of Windsor. And she names names. I've only heard of the exploits of such incredible panoply of characters from three other people--Susan Mary Alsop, Marietta Peabody Tree and Pamela Churchill Harriman. As I understand it, the author is now 98 years old (hurray for you, Robin), Thanks for sharing your incredible memories.

While I am a firm believer that everyone has a story to tell, this is not one I would recommend anyone to read. The author writes about a fascinating time in history, and while well written, the points she decided to focus on fell flat.
The 30's-50's were a time of great struggle and great triumph, and I was disappointed that the authors main focus was sex. I was a bit put off when she said she may have stayed in an abusive marriage if only he gave her the occasional orgasm.
Interesting point of view for some, but I am not her target audience.