Lesley Pearse was born in Rochester, Kent and spent three years in a Roman Catholic Children’s home following the death of her mother when she was three. Her father, a Royal Marine married an ex-army nursing sister three years later and Lesley was reunited with her older brother and a new foster sister. Later her new sister and a new born baby boy were adopted by her parents and the family was added to from time to time by more foster children. Some brought Lesley joy with their arrival. Some brought joy when they left.
When Lesley was eleven the family moved to South London and her father went to work for the post office.
Lesley was a story teller even then, as she says ‘It made up for being useless at any sport’, she would entertain her school friends with stories during wet dinner hours.
Her only ambition back then was to get married and have six children. Work was just something to pass the time until that happened. But after working in various offices as a lowly clerk, a children’s nanny, then eventually moving into the more glamorous work of Promotion and a spell as a Playboy Bunny, she decided six children was too many and settled for three.
Her writing career began when the youngest of her three daughters was born, first short stories and then books. ‘Georgia’ was the first to be published, based loosely on experiences she’d had with her second and ex husband, a musician during the ‘60’s.
‘Once I started writing I couldn’t stop,’ she says. ‘I felt I had hundreds of stories to tell.’
Now living in a cliff top house in Devon, alone with her King Charles Cavalier Stan, and soon to be a grandmother again for the fourth time, she is working on her 25th book, ‘The Woman in the Wood’.
