Celebrities in the Cotswolds

Mary Anderson (1859 to 1940)

Mary Anderson was a well-known American stage actress. Ordered to rest after her breakdown, Mary Anderson visited England and in 1890 married Antonio Fernando de Navarro, an American sportsman and barrister of Basque extraction, who was a Papal Privy Chamberlain ofthe Sword and Cape. They were married at at St. Mary's Chapel, Holly Place, Hempstead, England, June 17, 1890

They settled at Court Farm, High Street, Broadway, Worcestershire, where she cultivated an interest in music and became a noted hostess with a distinguished circle of musical, and ecclesiastical guests including J M Barrie. She also gave birth to a son and a daughter in her happy marriage.

A devout Roman Catholic she had a chapel built in her attic, with stained-glass windows designed by Paul Woodroffe. She has been cited as a model for characters in the Lucia novels of E F Benson, either the operatic soprano Olga Bracely or Lucia herself, as well as the prototype for the heroine of William Black's novel The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat.

She resisted encouragements to return to the theatre, but did a number of fund-raising performances during World War I in Worcester, Stratford and London. The latter included roles as Galatea, Juliet and Clarice in W. S. Gilbert's play Comedy and Tragedy.

She published two books of her memories, the 1896 A Few Memories and the 1936 A Few More Memories, and collaborated with Robert Smythe Hichens on a 1911 New York stage adaptation of his novel The Garden of Allah.

She died at her home in Broadway, Worcestershire, England, in 1940, aged 80.

The author J M Barrie was particularly fond of the actress Mary Anderson de Navarro, the Raquel Welch of her day. She challenged Barrie and his team to a cricket match on Broadway's village green.

He accepted the challenge. Mary captained her team of locals, who included the famous artists Alfred Parsons, Frank Millet, Edwin Abbey, George Boughton, Fred Barnard and Edwin Blashfield. See Broadway Artists for further information on these people.

Jeremy Clarkson

Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson (born April 11, 1960, in Doncaster) is an English broadcaster and writer who specialises in motoring. He writes weekly columns for The Sunday Times and The Sun, but is most associated with the BBC motoring programme Top Gear, which he presents, first doing so from 1989 until 1999, and then again from 2002. The show won an International Emmy in 2005. "Not a man given to considered opinion," according to the BBC, Clarkson is known to be opinionated and forthright in his views. He was once described by Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror as a "dazzling hero of political incorrectness".

Jeremy Clarkson lives between Chipping Norton and Chadlington in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.

Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper,author, journalist and broadcaster lives in the southern Cotswold village of Bisley, near Stroud.

The huge success of her first novel Riders, published in 1985 and reaching number one in the best sellers list in its first week, was entirely due, she says, to her move to Bisley. 'I was trying to write Riders in London and failing miserably, because it was set in the country. Then there was the fact that we were so broke that the bank said we would have to sell our lovely house here. It was quite and incentive to write better and more quickly,' she said.
She went on to write the blockbusters Rivals and Polo, and then Appassionata about an orchestra, set in the west country and including many references to Stroud. Other novels include The Man who Made Husbands Jealous and Score!. As well as the best sellers Jilly Cooper has written countless popular non-fiction books, including Women and Superwomen (1974), How to Survive Christmas (1986) and The Common Years (1982) about her dog walking exploits on the commons of south west London. She has also written a series of romantic novels and many children's books.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is an English artist and the leading artist of the group that has been dubbed "Young British Artists" (or YBAs). He dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s and is internationally renowned.

Death is a central theme in his work. He is best known for his Natural History series, in which dead animals (such as a shark, a sheep or a cow) are preserved, sometimes cut-up, in formaldehyde. His iconic work is The Physical Impossibility Of Death In the Mind Of Someone Living, an 18ft tiger shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine. Its sale in 2004 made him the second most expensive living artist (after Jasper Johns).

He is also known for "spin paintings", made on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly-coloured circles; these have been imitated in commercial graphics.

Damien was born in Bristol but brought up in Leeds and is thought  to be worth £100million. He bought in 2004 a Cotswolds retreat, the Victorian Gothic Toddington Manor, where the full extent of his collections will go on view to the public in a few years' time.

• For more information on - Damien Hirst's Cotswold Home

Joanna Trollope (1943 - )

A truly local author was born in Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire Cotswolds. She has since returned to live in the area where many of her books are set.

Joanna Trollope was born in her grandfather's rectory in the Cotswolds in December 1943, and although her actual childhood was spent in the Midlands and in Surrey, she always felt that her real "home" was her birthplace. Joanna says — “It gave me - still gives me - not just a sense of rootedness, but a capacity to value landscape and weather and the rich life of smallish communities.

Of the Cotswolds she wrote ....... But it’s more than just beautiful – it is ancient and interesting and varied and uncompromising. I like that last quality - the fact that the high limestone hills will sustain little but sheep; that winters can isolate the steep valleys; that the winding and often vertical lanes deter all but those who really want to discover and appreciate this remarkable landscape, these memorable towns and villages. So – off you go, and, as they say on some footpath signs round here, kill nothing but time, take away nothing but memories. And I can promise you that you’ll treasure those.

She is the author of eleven bestselling contemporary novels, including Girl from the South (2002), the story of an American Southerner who takes a job in London to escape the family and social pressures of her home in South Carolina. Brother & Sister (2004), is a story which explores the themes of adoption, loyalty and the nature of identity.

Joanna Trollope is also the author of several historical novels (published under the name of Caroline Harvey) and of a study of women in the British Empire entitled Britannia's Daughters (1983). Her books have been translated into over twenty-five languages.

The Choir (1988), A Village Affair (1989), The Rector's Wife (1991) and Other People's Children (1998) have all been made into series for television.

Joanna Trollope is a member of the same family as Anthony Trollope, author of The Barchester Chronicles. She was awarded an OBE in 1996 and lives partly in London and partly in Gloucestershire, for which county she was made a Deputy Lieutenant in 2002. Her latest novel is Second Honeymoon (2006).