Susan Lowndes Marques | |
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| Born | Susan Antonia Dorothea Priestley Lowndes 15 February 1907 |
| Died | 3 February 1993 (aged 85) |
| Nationality | British; Portuguese |
| Occupation(s) | Author, journalist |
| Known for | Contributor to Anglo-Portuguese relations |
Susan Antonia Dorothea Priestley Lowndes Marques OBE (15 February 1907 - 3 February 1993) was a writer and journalist who became a leading figure in the British community in Lisbon, Portugal. [1] [2]
Generally known as Susan Lowndes, or Susan Lowndes Marques after her marriage to the Portuguese, Luís Marques, she was born into a distinguished family. Her great, great-grandfather was the British scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley, who was credited with the discovery of oxygen. Her grandmother was Bessie Rayner Parkes, a prominent British feminist and champion of women's suffrage. Her mother, Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a well-known writer of crime novels and biographies, best known for her novel, The Lodger, based on Jack the Ripper, which sold over a million copies and was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926. Her uncle was the poet and novelist Hilaire Belloc. [1] [3]
Brought up in inter-war London, Susan Lowndes was therefore always surrounded by books and met many writers who visited the family home. Her father, Frederick Lowndes, worked as an editor for The Times. She was educated at St Mary's Convent, Ascot. On leaving school she did voluntary work and, for a time, ran an antique shop in London. In August 1938 she went with her father for a brief holiday in Lisbon, where she met Luís Artur de Oliveira Marques (1898-1976), an English-educated journalist. They were married in December of the same year in Westminster Cathedral in London and made their home in Lisbon, later moving to Monte Estoril. [1] [3]
Her husband was the editor (later owner) of the Anglo-Portuguese News, a newspaper targeted primarily at the British community in Portugal. She would carry on running it after his death until 1980. He was the Lisbon correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the New York Times, as well as doing some English teaching. Writers remained at the centre of her life. Their son, Paulo Lowndes Marques, recalled visits to Lisbon from Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Aldous Huxley and Graham Greene. Other visitors included Rose Macaulay, Angus Wilson and Sachaverell Sitwell. [1] [3]
During World War 2, in addition to working on the Anglo-Portuguese News, Susan Lowndes Marques and her husband helped out at the Press section of the British Embassy, reviewing the Portuguese press for items of British interest. The Anglo-Portuguese News was the only British newspaper published in Continental Europe during the war and received support from the British Government. Luís was referred to by Joseph Goebbels as “a man to be destroyed” and in a German propaganda radio programme the paper was called “the voice of Churchill in Lisbon”. As a consequence, the couple was on the special embassy list for immediate evacuation should Portugal have been invaded and a large sum of cash was always kept at their house just in case. During the war they were also active in supporting the refugees who passed through Lisbon in large numbers. [1] [2]
After the war, Lowndes, writing under her maiden name, collaborated with Ann Bridge, wife of the then British ambassador in Lisbon, Lord O'Malley, to publish The Selective Traveller in Portugal (1949), which became a classic in travel writing on Portugal. It involved the two authors in travelling throughout Portugal on poor roads in search of interesting places to recommend to potential visitors. [2] She subsequently wrote Good Food from Spain and Portugal (1956) and Portugal: A Travellers' Guide (1982), as well as annually revising Fodor's Guide to Portugal. Lowndes also wrote two small books on Fatima for thousands of English-speaking pilgrims. [3] She often gave lectures on Portuguese topics in Portugal and Britain. Together with her elder sister, Elizabeth, Countess of Iddesleigh, she edited The Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes (1971), which described the atmosphere of the interwar years in London. English Art in Portugal, written together with Alice Berkeley, was published posthumously in 1994. [1] [2]
Susan Lowndes and her husband had three children. Paulo Lowndes Marques (1941-2011) was a lawyer, historian, a founding member of the CDS – People's Party and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Portugal. Ana Vicente (1943-2015) was a leading supporter of women's rights and an author, including of children's books. She also wrote about life with her parents and compiled some of the letters of her mother. Her sister, Antonia Marques Leitão (born 1946), married the Portuguese diplomat Rui Burnay Morales de Los Rios da Silva Leitão. [4] [5]
Susan Lowndes was awarded an OBE in 1975 for services to the British community in Lisbon. Someone with strong Catholic beliefs, she was, at the time of her death, the Lisbon correspondent of the London-based Catholic Herald and of the US Catholic News Service. [1] She attached great importance to charity, believing that Christianity was lived in solidarity with the most vulnerable people. Hundreds of letters of thanks in her archives attest to the assistance she gave others. She worked voluntarily at the British Hospital in Lisbon and at St. Julian's International School, among several other organizations. [3] Towards the end of her life she established the British Retirement Home in São Pedro do Estoril for British people in Portugal who had fallen on hard times. She also had a very developed sense of humour. Two days before her death, when she was offered oxygen in the hospital, she referred back to her great, great-grandfather's discovery of oxygen, saying, “Dear Doctor Priestley”. [2]
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early 20th century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong effect on his works.
Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, who wrote as Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a prolific English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc.
The Cinema of Portugal started with the birth of the medium in the late 19th century. Cinema was introduced in Portugal in 1896 with the screening of foreign films and the first Portuguese film was Saída do Pessoal Operário da Fábrica Confiança, made in the same year. The first movie theater opened in 1904 and the first scripted Portuguese film was O Rapto de Uma Actriz (1907). The first all-talking sound film, A Severa, was made in 1931. Starting in 1933, with A Canção de Lisboa, the Golden Age would last the next two decades, with films such as O Pátio das Cantigas (1942) and A Menina da Rádio (1944). Aniki-Bóbó (1942), Manoel de Oliveira's first feature film, marked a milestone, with a realist style predating Italian neorealism by a few years. In the 1950s the industry stagnated. The early 1960s saw the birth of the Cinema Novo movement, showing realism in film, in the vein of Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, with films like Dom Roberto (1962) and Os Verdes Anos (1963). The movement became particularly relevant after the Carnation Revolution of 1974. In 1989, João César Monteiro's Recordações da Casa Amarela won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and in 2009, João Salaviza's Arena won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Several other Portuguese films have been in competition for major film awards like the Palme d'Or and the Golden Bear. João Sete Sete (2006) was the first Portuguese animated feature film. Portuguese cinema is significantly supported by the State, with the government's Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual giving films financial support.
Dona Maria Pia was by birth an Italian princess of the House of Savoy and by marriage Queen of Portugal as the spouse of King Luís I of Portugal. On the day of her baptism, Pope Pius IX, her godfather, gave her a Golden Rose. Maria Pia was married to Luís on 6 October 1862 in Lisbon. She was the grand mistress of the Order of Saint Isabel. She was the third queen of the House of Savoy on the Portuguese throne, after Mafalda and Marie-Françoise of Savoy-Nemours.
The Palace of Queluz is an 18th-century palace located at Queluz, a city of the Sintra Municipality, in the Lisbon District, on the Portuguese Riviera. One of the last great Rococo buildings to be designed in Europe, the palace was conceived as a summer retreat for King José I's brother, Pedro of Braganza, later to become husband and king jure uxoris to his own niece, Queen Maria I. It eventually served as a discreet place of incarceration for Maria I, when she became afflicted by severe mental illness in the years following Pedro III's death in 1786. Following the destruction of Ajuda Palace by fire in 1794, Queluz Palace became the official residence of the Portuguese Prince Regent João, and his family, and remained so until the royal family fled to the Portuguese colony of Brazil in 1807, following the French invasion of Portugal.
April Captains is a 2000 film telling the story of the Carnation Revolution, the military coup that overthrew the corporatist dictatorship in Portugal on 25 April 1974. Although dramatised, the plot is closely based on the events of the revolution and many of the key characters are real - such as Captain Salgueiro Maia and Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano.
Comédia à portuguesa is a term conventionally used to refer to the genre of popular Portuguese film comedies made in the 1930s and 1940s. The light-hearted comedies are predominantly set in petit-bourgeois milieus in traditional Lisbon neighbourhoods and are often accompanied by musical performances, mainly light music, fados or folk songs. The popular revue, the national equivalent of the North American vaudeville or the British music hall, had a marked influence over the comédia à portuguesa, including the talents of the actors, writers, and musicians.
Stafford Henry Northcote, 4th Earl of Iddesleigh, styled Viscount St Cyres until 1970, was a British peer, a member of the House of Lords from 1970 to November 1999, when the House of Lords Act 1999 came into effect.
Adelina Abranches was a Portuguese stage actress born in Lisbon. She was considered a child prodigy, performing roles on stage at the age of four. She is notable for her acting career in Rio de Janeiro.
Maria da Conceição Infante de Lacerda Pereira de Eça Custance O'Neill was a Portuguese writer, poet, journalist, and spiritualist of Irish descent.
Baltazar Leite Rebelo de Sousa, GCIH was a Portuguese politician and a former minister and member of parliament and medicine professor.
Elizabeth Rayner Belloc was one of the most prominent English feminists and campaigners for women's rights in Victorian times and also a poet, essayist and journalist.
Luis Maria Augusto Pinto de Soveral, Marquês de Soveral GCMG GCVO was a Portuguese diplomat. Kaiser Wilhelm II nicknamed him "the Blue Monkey".
The Portuguese Riviera is a term used in the tourist industry for the affluent coastal region to the west of Lisbon, Portugal, centered on the coastal municipalities of Cascais, Oeiras and Sintra. It is coterminous with the Estoril Coast and occasionally known as the Costa do Sol. Portuguese themselves do not use this expression.
Summer architecture was a Portuguese architectural movement originating in the Portuguese Riviera, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the region became a popular resort destination for the Portuguese royal family and the Portuguese aristocracy. The movement is not characterized by any single architectural style or artistic school, but rather unified by common themes, including leisure, wellness, exoticism, and heterotopia.
Paulo Henrique Lowndes Marques was a Portuguese politician, lawyer, author, historian and conservationist. He was a founder member of the CDS – People's Party and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Portugal. With a Portuguese father and a British mother, he was an active promoter of Anglo-Portuguese relations.
Ana Vicente was an Anglo-Portuguese writer with a strong Catholic faith, known for her support for feminist causes.
Maria Antónia Palla is a journalist, writer and feminist who was one of the first female journalists in Portugal. She played an important role in the legalization of abortion in the country, by promoting the practice in interviews and television programmes. In 2004 Palla was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of Liberty. She is the mother of António Costa, the former Prime Minister of Portugal.
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