The Queen of Whale Cay
The Extraordinary Story of 'Joe' Carstairs, the Fastest Woman on Water
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The Queen of Whale Cay
Narrated by:
Lissa Berry
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Narrated by:
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Lissa Berry
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By:
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Kate Summerscale
About this listen
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'A biography that sparkles with enthusiastic research and empathetic writing' – Sunday Times
'A small jewel of a biography' – The New Yorker
'A fascinating, hilarious and deliciously subversive book' – Literary Review
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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
Born in 1900 to a promiscuous American oil heiress and a British army captain, Marion Barbara Carstairs realised very early on that she was not like most little girls.
Liberated by war work in WWI, Marion reinvented herself as Joe, and quickly went on to establish herself as a leading light of the fashionable lesbian demi-monde. She dressed in men's clothes, smoked cigars and cheroots, tattooed her arms, and became Britain's most celebrated female speed-boat racer – the 'fastest woman on water'.
Yet Joe tired of the limelight in 1934, and retired to the Bahamian Island of Whale Cay. There she fashioned her own self-sufficient kingdom, where she hosted riotous parties which boasted Hollywood actresses and British royalty among their guests. Although her lovers included screen sirens such as Marlene Dietrich, the real love of Joe's life was a small boy-doll named Lord Tod Wadley, to whom she remained devoted throughout her remarkable life. She died, aged 93, in 1993.©1997 Kate Summerscale (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Critic reviews
"She was crazy and brave and her story is jaw-droppingly amazing...Great stuff." (Val Hennessy, Daily Mail)
"A wonderful account of a truly extraordinary life." (Mail on Sunday)
"A biography that sparkles with enthusiastic research and empathetic writing." (Sunday Times)
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