Going for a short holliday in ... ROMA !! See you after the weekend ...

Roma "chez Moi"


Roma "Chez" Panini

The Irish Guards

The Irish Guards

The Foot Guards are the Infantry regiments of the Household Division of the British Army. There have been six regiments of foot guards, five of which still exist. The Machine Gun Guards, which was formed during the First World War, was disbanded in 1920:

Grenadier Guards
Coldstream Guards
Scots Guards
Irish Guards
Welsh Guards
Guards Machine Gun Regiment ("Machine Gun Guards")
While these regiments may have other distinguishing features, a simple method of identification is by observing the spacing of buttons on the tunic. The ascending number of buttons also indicates the order in which the regiments were formed, although the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards, an ancestor of the Grenadier Guards, is younger than the regiment that now takes the name of the Coldstream Guards; the oldest continuously-serving regiment in the regular British Army (there are older regiments in the Territorial Army). There are various other methods of distinguishing between the regiments; the colour of the plume, and which side it is worn on the bearskin, the collar badge and the shoulder badge. When all five regiments parade together, they are in the order of Grenadier Guards on the right flank, then Scots Guards, Welsh Guards, Irish Guards and Coldstream Guards on the left flank. This is because although the Coldstream are ranked second in seniority, their motto is 'Nulli Secundus' ('Second to None').



The cap star is an eight-pointed star of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick. In the center is a shamrock, super-imposed on each leaf of the shamrock is a State Imperial Crown of Ireland. Behind the shamrock is the cross of St Patrick. Below are the Roman numerals "MDCCLXXXIII" which stand for 1783, the year the order was formed. Above are the Latin words "QUIS SEPARABIT" which is the Regimental motto and translates as:

"WHO SHALL SEPARATE US"



The Irish Guards were formed on 1st April 1900 by order of HRH Queen Victoria to commemorate the bravery of the Irish people who fought in the Boer war. The Irish Guards played a major part in both World Wars, winning a total of six Victoria Crosses including the last to be presented in the Second World War and have seen armed conflict in many parts of the world since 1945.

On 21st April 1900, the first recruit, James O'Brien of Limerick, was enlisted and many followed as a free transfer was offered to all Irishmen serving not only in the Guards Brigade but also from the line Regiments.

The Irish Guards are presented with shamrock on every St Patrick's day (17th March) by a member of the Royal Family. This dates back to 1901 when HRH Princess Alexandra presented the Battalion with it for the first time. Until recent years this duty has been carried out by HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother but the honor has now been passed to other members of the Royal family.

The Irish Guards, originally nicknamed "Bob's Own" after Lord Roberts, the First Colonel of the Regiment, are affectionately and widely known as "The Micks". No other Regiment of Foot Guards has such a widely accepted nickname.

The Foot Guards

Clarissa Eden: A Witness to History

She was born into the aristocracy: her uncle was Winston Churchill, her mentor when she studied philosophy at Oxford was Sir Isaiah Berlin and when she did her season, she danced with Donald Maclean, the spy. She counted Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Lucian Freud, Cecil Beaton, Greta Garbo, Ian Fleming, Nancy Mitford and Orson Welles among her friends. Before she married, indeed, her life was all about culture and the arts. Afterwards it became all about politics. "My life," she says, "divided into two parts."
That is how her memoirs, published this week, are structured. She had requested that her diaries remained unpublished until 10 years after her death; why the change of heart? "I didn't want to write it, as I don't like parading myself, but when I met Cate I thought perhaps I can do it now."
She refers to Cate Haste, the wife of Melvyn Bragg, who has edited the book and written introductions to the various phases in Lady Avon's life. Previously, she was the co-author, with Cherie Blair, of The Goldfish Bowl. She is sitting alongside us now. "Clarissa needed a lot of persuading to write this book," Haste says.
But it proved easy once she started, in part because, as Lady Avon points out, her generation corresponded more than people do today. "One would even write to friends one was seeing almost every day," she says. "Everyone was very nice in sending my letters back to me for this book. I didn't keep all mine. I remember throwing some of Isaiah's into the wastepaper basket."
When I note that there is a Mitford feel to her writing, she says, "Oh dear". I mean the irony and the dry humour. "I don't have the argot they did. Nancy became my friend, although I saw more of Debo."
Did she, like the Mitford sisters, feel cheated of a formal university education? "From the age of 16 I did feel very much cheated, mainly because I wasn't well taught. I didn't take the school certificate because I was so bored. None of my female contemporaries got to university at all. Not one." Although she didn't take a degree, she studied at Oxford in the 1930s and was, according to Antonia Fraser, "the dons' delight, because she was beautiful and extremely intellectual". She was quite the bohemian, too, wearing suits in the style of Marlene Dietrich. But the impending war meant there was an air of menace, as well as frivolity. "I knew for certain that there would be a war, because of my uncle. He had been prognosticating throughout the Thirties. I knew because he knew, so to speak. The people who didn't want to know believed in Chamberlain."
She was living in London during the war, decoding ciphers in the Foreign Office. "I was in the bowels of the building, so I never met Anthony [then foreign secretary], who was upstairs. It sounds awful to say it, but the war was exciting. The bombing was going on all round. One was young and didn't think about it. I lived on the top floor of the Dorchester and went on the roof to watch the fireworks. At that age you don't imagine that anything is going to happen to you."
She seems to have had many suitors at the time. "I don't know, I don't know. Cate seems to think so."
"It's true," says Cate Haste. "Men fell in love with you quite a lot. That was my impression from reading the correspondence."
Both Duff Cooper, the wartime information minister, and Evelyn Waugh protested their love for her in their letters. Did she not realise this at the time? "It didn't make a great impression on me, which is rather awful. Sounds rather conceited, but it didn't somehow."
When her engagement to Anthony Eden was announced in 1952 her friends were shocked. "They almost didn't take it seriously. It seemed an extraordinary thing to happen." Extraordinary in what way? "I wasn't of that world."
He was 23 years older; did that age difference bother her? "No, it was more that none of my friends were his friends, we lived in different worlds, socially."
Evelyn Waugh cautioned against the marriage. "He opposed it, assuming it couldn't happen on religious grounds because Anthony was a divorcee. It came as a shock to him to him when I told him. Our friendship never recovered. Bang! That was it. Other Catholic friends were more civilised about it."
Soon after she married, she found herself in the extraordinary position of having to take sides between her uncle Winston, who was dragging out his resignation as prime minister, and her husband, who was the heir apparent. "My sympathies had to be with my husband. Anthony didn't push when it was time for Winston to go. It is never easy to go, as Tony Blair showed."
History doesn't always repeat itself, though. Shortly after becoming prime minister in 1955, Eden called a snap election and won. "Yes, it paid off for my husband. He increased the majority.
"I'm sure he was right to call that election when he did. It is all about timing. He felt the need to have a mandate on his own terms, rather than inheriting one. I would have thought that a good idea, but then I don't know much about Gordon Brown."
Mr Brown thought a snap election was a good idea until the polls changed. "Hmm, yes. I don't think we were persecuted by the polls in quite the same way in those days."
But she - they - were persecuted by the media. "You mean during the Suez Crisis? Yes. Absolutely. Anthony was no good at spin. It didn't occur to him."
I ask how she imagines her husband would fare in today's political climate, given that some consider the Eton-educated David Cameron too posh for purpose.
"I suppose that applied to my husband even more. He seemed pretty posh at the time, but as he had just come out of the war he genuinely liked talking to the man in the street."
I suggest that people thought it appropriate to be ruled by their social superiors then. "I don't think it was that. They liked him because they knew he liked them. That was the reason."
Clarissa Eden was haunted by an unguarded comment she made during Suez. "In the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing-room."
It became one of the most quoted comments on the Crisis, cited as proof that the Edens were divorced from reality. "Both Anthony and I were quite naive about how the press works. Neither of us should have been, but we were."
Nevertheless, an impression built up that Eden was unduly influenced by his wife; that he consulted her politically during Suez. Indeed, in her diary, Lady Jebb, the wife of the British ambassador to Paris, alluded to "Clarissa's war".
I ask if there was any truth in that perception. "Oh no, he wouldn't have done that. I might have given him gossip but that was all."
But she was politically astute, I note. She knew exactly what was going on during the Suez Crisis. "Only because he told me."
So he would share his innermost thoughts? "He would tell me what was happening in Cabinet, but I don't think I ever gave him advice. I wanted to be supportive. I didn't egg him on."
Any advice for Samantha Cameron? "So much depends on the husband in terms of how the wife copes with it all. She appears to have much stronger views than I ever had. She has a career, after all. My only advice to Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron would be to keep a diary. Mine was frivolous. About people. What they said and how they behaved."
Her husband's reputation was permanently tarnished by Suez. Her anger about that is palpable. "They were a whole bunch of prima donnas."
The Americans behaved shabbily? "Quite. Eisenhower later regretted his stance." She also blames Harold Macmillan, then foreign secretary, first for giving her husband the impression that the Americans would not intervene, then for buckling too soon when the Americans brought economic pressure to bear.
"Macmillan was too hasty. He used the American threat to withhold the IMF loan as an excuse to back down." When Eden resigned in January 1957, officially due to ill health, Macmillan "wept crocodile tears", according to Lady Avon.
Did the Suez experience leave her husband bitter? "If he was bitter he never showed it to me. Not bitter, no. That wasn't in his nature. He was just very sad about it."
Does she imagine Blair now thinks of Iraq as his Suez? "I shouldn't think so, do you? I don't know much about Mr Blair's psychology but I doubt he thinks in any way that he has been defeated."
Nevertheless: "I suppose Mr Blair will be judged on Iraq, as Anthony was judged on Suez."
There is a steeliness below Lady Avon's polite and self-deprecating surface. She talks in a precise and measured way, rarely elaborating. Her prose style is like that, too.
When it is time for her photograph to be taken, her instructions are unambiguous: "Don't ask me to smile. I'm sick of smiling in photographs. I want to look glum."
Thursday 13 January 2011 (The Telegraph )




Exclusive extracts from the memoirs of Clarissa Eden

Towards the end of the meal Anthony turned to me and muttered, “Perhaps we could have dinner sometime?” Intrigued and amused, I accepted.
When we got to know each other better it became apparent that we were, on the face of it, a surprising couple, as people hastened to point out. Most of my friends were writers or critics or painters. Most of his were politicians, but we shared a love of art and books.
He had had knocks at every phase of his personal life and, like many Englishmen, hadn’t known intimacy. He was happy when it came to him later. Although he was older than me we had both led single lives. The announcement of our engagement in the papers was met with consternation and astonishment by friends on both sides. His colleagues, while happy that he would no longer be alone, were wary of his choice. My Aunt Clemmie [Clementine Churchill, wife of Winston] thought me too independent and totally unsuitable, and my own friends were dismayed, or, at best, doubtful. My aunt being away on holiday, we went down to Chartwell to break the news to my Uncle Winston. He congratulated us with his usual magnanimity.
After marriage
Back from honeymoon, I was thrown into a world of which I had had no inkling [Anthony Eden was Foreign Secretary at the time]. Politics had never played a part in my life, though at lunches at my uncle’s before the [Second World] war I had heard a lot of it, including the prediction that war was inevitable.
My desire was to make everything as easy and pleasant as possible for my husband. I had had no conception of what his life would be like – the hours he worked, the triumphs and setbacks, the constant crises.
Anthony had grown accustomed to being surrounded by staff and private secretaries who were there to do his bidding. I tried to adapt to this new life in a flat surrounded by someone else’s possessions and two resentful old retainers. I was not used to someone coming home every day for lunch and expecting a fish or meat four-course meal each time.
My first visitor at Carlton Gardens was the wife of the then head of the Foreign Office, Lady Strang, who came to tea. Though I did wonder what I had got myself into when her opening remark was ‘I hope you are not going to denationalise steel – it is doing so well.’ I had previously had no views about steel.
Anthony’s illness
After we had returned to England [from a trip to the United States in 1953], suddenly there was an unexpected personal bombshell, which changed everything.

Throughout these trips Anthony had been troubled by intermittent pains. His doctor seemed overawed by the importance of the Foreign Secretary’s life, supplied him with pain-killing injections and never got him examined – and then it was too late. It turned out to be his gall-bladder. Horace Evans, the Queen’s physician, thankfully appeared and an emergency operation took place. What should have been a simple operation – which Anthony, being basically very strong, would have taken in his stride – became a major crisis, requiring yet another operation to try to repair the damage of the first. At one point Anthony was very near death.
Evans then said the greatest expert on botched gall-bladder operations, an American – Dr Richard Cattell – happened to be visiting London. He saw Anthony and pronounced the only hope of saving his life was yet another operation – a major repair job. My uncle [Winston Churchill] said it should be done in England – after all he had had his appendix out on the kitchen table. The expert said there was a better chance of survival if he could do it in Boston with his own team. So in early June a dying Anthony was transported to the New England Baptist Hospital for his third operation, which lasted eight hours.
Three months later Anthony was back at the Foreign Office, working from 8am until 1am the following morning, seven days a week. The intensity of this crisis after only a short period of marriage bound us together in a situation of emotional dependence. You cannot nurse a dying man surrounded by publicity in Boston, Massachusetts, without a very tight bond being forged. If a patient is willing himself to live, it makes the role of nurse-wife that much easier. His obsessive job might otherwise have made our life together politically humdrum for much longer.
Anthony Eden served as Foreign Secretary until April 1955, when Winston Churchill, after much prevarication, finally stood down as Prime Minister. As the new PM, Eden called a snap election and increased the Conservative majority from 17 to 60. Then, in July 1956, President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal Company. The canal was the lifeline of oil supplies to Europe on which much of Britain’s economy and prosperity depended. It also carried symbolic power as a link to Empire. The Suez Crisis would last for the next four months, and end in humiliation when the US forced Britain to abandon a military intervention aimed at regaining control of the canal. Eden was forced to resign as Prime Minister after 20 months in office.
During the Suez Crisis, 1956
Friends were sending me messages of support. Isaiah (Berlin) sent Anthony his admiration and sympathy in circumstances which put “his courage, honesty and strength of will… to a most appalling test…” and “whatever the outcome he has risked his own reputation for what he thinks to be a vital national interest. I think his policy is in essentials absolutely right.” John Sparrow, Warden of All Souls, Oxford, wrote on 9 November of his intense admiration of Anthony’s handling of the situation: “Not even Winston in the darkest hours of the war has had such a burden to bear as he has borne for the last ten days… His incredible patience and wonderful firmness are beginning to reap their reward.” Cyril Connolly declared he was “100 per cent behind the PM” and wished he could find more ways of saying so. Others overwhelmingly echoed this approval.
From Clarissa’s diary on November 4, 1956, during Suez
That afternoon, hearing intermittent roaring and remembering that Aneurin Bevan was having a protest rally in Trafalgar Square, I decided to go and have a look. I let myself out through the garden door on to Horse Guards (a route I always used anyway and kept my car there) and walked up to the square. Bevan was in full flow at the centre, but before I could take in the atmosphere, let alone what he was saying, those on the fringes had recognised me and started to come up with encouraging remarks – “keep going” etc. So I thought it prudent to retreat again.
By now we had been living in a perpetual state of tension for over three months. The atmosphere was so charged that it became a normal state to be in. Yet when Anthony came up each evening he always seemed calm in voice and manner. He would talk about the troubles in Cabinet.
I didn’t feel I knew enough to interfere in any way. I listened sympathetically, and was interested in the details and behaviour of his colleagues. I always assumed Anthony was right because he had so much more experience in foreign affairs.
The controversial “holiday”
The doctors at this point [November 1956] insisted Anthony should get away. Ann Fleming offered her husband [James Bond creator] Ian’s house in Jamaica for a few weeks’ rest, which we accepted. This was thought a mistake, but a spell in Berkshire or somewhere would not have been any good, as Anthony would simply have gone on working.
So off we went to Jamaica. Goldeneye [Fleming’s Jamaican home], which could not have been a greater contrast, was perched on its own coral bay. Noel Coward, a neighbour, sent down Frank Cooper’s marmalade and Huntley & Palmers biscuits, which was not what we had been looking forward to, exactly. Jamaica is a beautiful island, but sinister. There were strange tom-toms beating in the night – but when I asked Violet, the cook, what was going on she said, “Sal-va-tion Army.” I was not wholly convinced. Ann told me that when they returned to Goldeneye they found that the security men had carved “God bless Sir Anthony” on all the trees.
From Clarissa’s diary of December 14, on the Edens’ return from Jamaica
Got several panicky telegrams while we were out there about debates and so on but the government majorities were good. Returned to find everyone looking at us with thoughtful eyes – evidently the criticism has been rather strong. Letters to me are as good as ever. The first day Anthony tells the Cabinet that he went away because he was told that it was the only possible way of getting well. He didn’t know if he had got well – did they wish him to continue? Bobbety, Rab, Amory, Patrick, Kilmuir, Eccles, Sandys, Alan, Walter all said yes. Harold and Macleod said only Anthony could decide.

Peter Thorneycroft said Anthony should go, and say he was going to unite the country and the world.
Selwyn had said no then changed his mind when the majority said yes.
It never seemed to me that health was affecting any of Anthony’s judgements and this was the opinion of those working for him. I do not remember him being dependent on daily stimulants and I was there with him every day and night. Horace Evans may have prescribed them, but Anthony was not a person who wished to jeopardise his judgement – he even refused to take Sparine, the tranquilliser prescribed, though I made use of them. Later, before and after our return from Jamaica, he was taking the prescribed dose of Drinamyl.
Anthony Eden’s resignation On New Year’s Day
Anthony was feeling terribly tired and having pains again. Then, and only then, were the doctors back once more. To our astonishment we now found Horace Evans adamant. He said Anthony would eventually kill himself, but before that he would collapse, possibly in about six weeks, certainly by Easter. We were dumbfounded and rather shocked.
Clarissa’s diary, January 7 1957
A weekend of tossing and turning. Anthony’s pains came back on top of everything else, or perhaps because of everything else.
Clarissa’s diary, January 9
Anthony goes to the Palace to give up his seals of office. The Queen says that she has been fortunate in having Anthony. She thanks him for always being so helpful and making it so nice for her. Anthony refuses an earldom.
After Harold [Macmillan] became Prime Minister we stayed briefly at Chequers. I went up to London, dodging the press at all the main gates at Chequers, and spent an awful day packing up. It was the longest weekend I’ve ever spent. Dorothy Macmillan came to see me on Saturday. None of the servants wanted to stay. Mrs Skitt gave me a cooking lesson on Sunday morning and cried into the eggs.
After the resignation
We decided on a trip to New Zealand and eventually on to the Pacific Islands. The RMS Rangitata was sailing for Auckland, so we arranged to sail on her.
As we went down the Thames all the ships were dressed overall and sending messages of good luck. The boys on the Worcester training ship lined the rails to give three cheers and a submarine raced along beside us. Anthony was very unhappy.
On our arrival at Auckland there was a fantastic reception. We had been lent a house at Otekai on the Bay of Islands. Our bay had downs and combes, with groves of pohutukawa trees running right down to the beaches, with deserted sand and rocks covered with oysters – the garden full of hibiscus, bananas, peaches and figs and a magnolia grandiflora as large as an English elm. It was a revelation and a breathtaking combination of everything we liked most in scenery and climate. For several mad days we determined to stay there for ever.
Then Anthony’s sudden high fevers returned. After some weeks it became clear an emergency operation was inevitable and our dream of the South Pacific, Samoa and Tahiti was over. So back to Boston and the New England Baptist Hospital for Anthony, and the Ritz Carlton Hotel for me.

Later life
Anthony was sixty-one when he retired from politics. He survived for nearly another twenty years and remained energetic, playing tennis, travelling, writing, farming. I was pleased to leave politics, and that we could have a marriage without all the tensions, plottings and shenanigans of political life.
Anthony, with his family roots in County Durham, always said the people in the North were quicker witted and nicer but he could not stand the climate, so it had to be the South. As it turned out, this was a wise decision because we did go to London from time to time and he eventually took up his earldom [what Clement Attlee had called the “rate for the job”] so that he could speak on foreign affairs in the Lords.
On the excuse that Anthony should avoid colds and flu, we took to going to the West Indies each winter. Thus we visited Mustique, which had just been bought by my friend Colin Tennant. From there we saw on an adjacent island a white spot poised above a deserted long white beach flanked by a coconut grove. We rushed over and bought the small gingerbread house on the island of Bequia – then with no hotel, no roads, no electricity, no water, no telephone and no airstrip. It was paradise. We were the only non-Caribbeans, except a young American who was said to have figured this was the safest place to be if there was an atomic war. Friends could only visit us unannounced from their yachts – including my Uncle Winston on Onassis’s boat. We had halcyon winters there and were able to master huge works of literature not possible elsewhere.
In spite of two further operations, twenty years passed easily and pleasantly. By 1976 his strength was failing. As I wrote to Mrs Thatcher, “His health was gradually robbing him of his zest for life.” During the last two years of his life we spent the winter months at Averell and Pamela Harriman’s house in Florida. It was there that the end began, Jim Callaghan arranging for him to be flown back to England so that he could die at home. He was a few months short of his eightieth birthday.
He was buried not in County Durham, where his forebears have lain for centuries, but in the churchyard at Alvediston, his last home.
I asked Reynolds Stone to design his tomb in Portland stone and inscribed it with all the offices he held during more than thirty years of service to his country.

Audrey Hepburn Natural born "chic" ... Aristocratic style .... Noble Soul ...

Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929(1929-05-04) – 20 January 1993(1993-01-20)) was a British actress and humanitarian.

Born in Ixelles, Belgium, as Audrey Kathleen Ruston, Hepburn spent her childhood chiefly in the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem, Netherlands, during the Second World War. She studied ballet in Arnhem and then moved to London in 1948, where she continued to train in ballet and worked as a photographer's model. She appeared in several European films before starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi. Hepburn played the lead female role in Roman Holiday (1953), winning an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her performance. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Ondine (1954). She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1961.[1]

Hepburn became one of the most successful film actresses in the world and performed with notable leading men such as Gregory Peck, Rex Harrison, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Fred Astaire, James Garner, Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney. She won BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Nun's Story (1959) and Charade (1963) and received Academy Award nominations for Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Wait Until Dark (1967).

She starred as Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady (1964), becoming only the third actor to receive $1,000,000 for a film role. From 1968 to 1975 she took a break from film-making to spend more time with her two sons. In 1976, she starred with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian. In 1989, she made her last film appearance in Steven Spielberg's Always.

Her war-time experiences inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although she had worked for UNICEF since the 1950s, during her later life she dedicated much of her time and energy to the organization. From 1988 until 1992, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In 1992, Hepburn was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In 1999, she was posthumously ranked as the third greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston[2] on Rue Keyenveld (French)/ Keienveldstraat (Dutch) in Ixelles/Elsene, a municipality in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), an English banker of Irish descent,[3] and his second wife Ella van Heemstra, the former Baroness Ella (1900–1984), a Dutch aristocrat, who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana,[3] and who spent her childhood in the Huis Doorn manor house outside Doorn, that was subsequently the residence in exile of the former German Emperor, Wilhelm II.

Her father later prefixed the surname of his maternal grandmother, Kathleen Hepburn, to the family's and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston.[3] She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (born 1924), by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman, Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford.[3]

Although born in Belgium, Hepburn had British citizenship and attended school in England as a child.[4] Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant that the family often travelled between Brussels, England, and the Netherlands. From 1935 to 1938, Hepburn was educated at Miss Rigden's School, an independent girls' school in the village of Elham, Kent, in the southeast of England.[5][6]

World War IIIn 1935, Hepburn's parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathiser,[7] left the family.[8] Both parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s according to Unity Mitford, a friend of Ella van Heemstra and a follower of Adolf Hitler.[9]

Hepburn referred to her father's abandonment as the most traumatic moment of her life. Years later, she located him in Dublin, Ireland, through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, she stayed in contact with him and supported him financially until his death.[10]

In 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem in the Netherlands, believing the Netherlands would be safe from German attack. Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945, where she trained in ballet along with the standard school curriculum. In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. During the German occupation, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents because an "English sounding" name was considered dangerous, with her mother feeling that "Audrey" might indicate her British roots too strongly. Being English in the occupied Netherlands was not an asset; it could have attracted the attention of the occupying German forces and resulted in confinement or even deportation. Edda was never her legal name, also it was a version of her mother's name Ella.[11]

By 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. She later said, "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances".[12] After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse, and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire that was part of Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed, over the winter of 1944, the Germans blocked the resupply routes of the Dutch people's already limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder the German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits.[7][13]

Hepburn's half-brother, Ian van Ufford, spent time in a German labour camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anaemia, respiratory problems, and oedema.[14] In 1991, Hepburn said "I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child".[15]

One way that Audrey Hepburn passed the time was by drawing. Some of her childhood artwork can be seen today.[16] When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed.[17] Hepburn said in an interview she ate an entire can of condensed milk and then got sick from one of her first relief meals because she put too much sugar in her oatmeal.[18] Hepburn's wartime experiences later led her to become involved with UNICEF.[7][13]

[edit] Early careerIn 1945, after the war, Hepburn left the Arnhem Conservatory and moved to Amsterdam, where she took ballet lessons with Sonia Gaskell.[19] Hepburn appeared as a stewardess in a short tourism film for KLM,[20] before travelling with her mother to London. Gaskell provided an introduction to Marie Rambert, and Hepburn studied ballet at the "Ballet Rambert", supporting herself with part time work as a model. Hepburn eventually asked Rambert about her future. Rambert assured her that she could continue to work there and have a great career, but the fact that she was relatively tall (1.7m/5 ft 7) coupled with her poor nutrition during the war would keep her from becoming a prima ballerina. Hepburn trusted Rambert's assessment and decided to pursue acting, a career in which she at least had a chance to excel.[21] After Hepburn became a star, Rambert said in an interview, "She was a wonderful learner. If she had wanted to persevere, she might have become an outstanding ballerina".[22]

Hepburn's mother worked menial jobs in order to support them and Hepburn needed to find employment. Since she trained to be a performer all her life, acting seemed a sensible career. She said, "I needed the money; it paid ₤3 more than ballet jobs".[23] Her acting career began with the educational film Dutch in Seven Lessons (1948). She played in musical theatre in productions such as High Button Shoes and Sauce Piquante in the West End. Her theatre work revealed that her voice was not strong and needed to be developed, and during this time she took elocution lessons with the actor Sir Felix Aylmer.[24] Part time modelling work was not always available and Hepburn registered with the casting officers of Britain's film studios in the hope of getting work as an extra.

Hepburn's first role in a motion picture was in the British film One Wild Oat in which she played a hotel receptionist. She played several more minor roles in Young Wives' Tale, Laughter in Paradise, The Lavender Hill Mob, and Monte Carlo Baby.

During the filming of Monte Carlo Baby, Hepburn was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play Gigi, that opened on 24 November 1951, at the Fulton Theatre and ran for 219 performances.[25] The writer Colette, when she first saw Hepburn, reportedly said "Voilà! There's our Gigi!"[26] She won a Theatre World Award for her performance.[25] Hepburn's first significant film performance was in the Thorold Dickinson film Secret People (1952), in which she played a prodigious ballerina. Hepburn did all of her own dancing scenes.


From Hepburn's Roman Holiday screen test which was also used in the promotional trailer for the film.Her first starring role was with Gregory Peck in the Italian-set Roman Holiday (1953). Producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role but director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test (the camera was left on and candid footage of Hepburn relaxing and answering questions, unaware that she was still being filmed, displayed her talents), that he cast her in the lead. Wyler said, "She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting and we said, 'That's the girl!'"[27]

The movie was to have had Gregory Peck's name above the title in large font with "Introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath. After filming had been completed, Peck called his agent and, predicting correctly that Hepburn would win the Academy Award for Best Actress, had the billing changed so that her name also appeared before the title in type as large as his.[28]

Hepburn and Peck bonded during filming and there were rumours that they were romantically involved; both denied it. Hepburn, however, added, "Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you're going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can't do it any other way. But you don't carry it beyond the set".[29] They did however become lifelong friends. Due to the instant celebrity that came with Roman Holiday, Hepburn's illustration was placed on the 7 September 1953, cover of TIME.[30]

Hepburn's performance received much critical praise. A. H. Weiler noted in The New York Times, "Although she is not precisely a newcomer to films, Audrey Hepburn, the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Ann, is a slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgement of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future".[31] Hepburn would later call Roman Holiday her dearest movie, because it was the one that made her a star.

After filming Roman Holiday for four months, Hepburn returned to New York and performed in Gigi for eight months. The play was performed in Los Angeles and San Francisco in its last month.

She was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work.[32]

Hollywood stardom
With William Holden in Sabrina (1954)Following Roman Holiday, she starred in Billy Wilder's Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. During the shooting of the film, Hepburn was sent to a then young and upcoming fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy to decide on her wardrobe. When he was told that "Miss Hepburn" was coming to see him, the person who came to Givenchy's mind was Katharine Hepburn. He was disappointed to see Audrey Hepburn and told her that he did not have much time to spare, but she asked for just a few minutes to pick out a few pieces for Sabrina.[28] Shortly after, Givenchy and Hepburn developed a lasting friendship, and she was often a muse for many of his designs. They formed a lifelong friendship and partnership.

During the filming of Sabrina, Hepburn and the already-married Holden became romantically involved. She hoped to marry him and have children. She broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had undergone a vasectomy.[33][34]

A common perception of the time was that Bogart and Hepburn did not get along; however, Hepburn has been quoted as saying, "Sometimes it's the so-called 'tough guys' that are the most tender hearted, as Bogey was with me".[35]

In 1954, Hepburn returned to the stage to play the water sprite in Ondine in a performance with Mel Ferrer, whom she would marry later in the year. During the run of the play, Hepburn was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress and the Academy Award, both for Roman Holiday. Six weeks after receiving the Oscar, Hepburn was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actress for Ondine. Audrey Hepburn is one of only three actresses to receive a Best Actress Oscar and Best Actress Tony in the same year (the others being Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn).[1]

By the mid-1950s, Hepburn was not only one of the biggest motion picture stars in Hollywood, but also a major fashion influence. Her gamine and elfin appearance and widely recognised sense of chic were both admired and imitated. In 1955, she was awarded the Golden Globe for World Film Favorite – Female.[36]


Hepburn in War and Peace (1956)Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, Hepburn co-starred with actors such as Henry Fonda in War and Peace, Fred Astaire in Funny Face, William Holden in Paris When It Sizzles, Maurice Chevalier and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon, Anthony Perkins in Green Mansions, Burt Lancaster and Lillian Gish in The Unforgiven, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner in The Children's Hour, George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Cary Grant in Charade, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million and Sean Connery in Robin and Marian.

Funny Face in 1957 was one of Hepburn's favourites because she got to dance with Fred Astaire.[citation needed] Then in 1959's The Nun's Story came one of her most daring roles. Films in Review stated: "Her performance will forever silence those who have thought her less an actress than a symbol of the sophisticated child/woman. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen".[37]

Otto Frank even asked her to play his daughter Anne's onscreen counterpart in the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank,[citation needed] but Hepburn, who was born the same year as Anne, was almost 30 years old, and felt too old to play a teenager. The role was eventually given to Millie Perkins.


Hepburn in the theatrical trailer to Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Hepburn in a scene from the comic thriller Charade (1963).Hepburn's Holly Golightly in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's became an iconic character in American cinema. She called the role "the jazziest of my career".[38] Asked about the acting challenge of the role, she replied, "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did".[39] In the film, she wore trendy clothing designed by herself and Givenchy, and added blonde streaks to her brown hair, a look that she would keep off-screen as well.

In 1963, Hepburn starred in Charade, her only film with Cary Grant, who had previously withdrawn from the starring roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina. He was sensitive as to their age difference and requested a script change so that Hepburn's character would be the one to romantically pursue his.[citation needed] Grant loved to humour her and once said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn".[40]

Released after Charade was Paris When It Sizzles, a film that reteamed Hepburn with William Holden nearly ten years after Sabrina. The film, called "marshmallow-weight hokum",[41] was "uniformly panned";[42] Behind the scenes, the set was plagued with problems: Holden tried without success to rekindle a romance with the now-married actress; that, combined with his alcoholism made the situation a challenge. Hepburn did not help matters: after principal photography began, she demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies.[42] Superstitious, she insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number (she had dressing room 55 for Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s). She insisted that Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume.[42]

In 1964, Hepburn starred in My Fair Lady which was said to be the most anticipated movie since Gone with the Wind.[43] Hepburn was cast as Eliza Doolittle instead of Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway, but had no film experience as yet. The decision not to cast Andrews was made before Hepburn was chosen. Hepburn initially refused the role and asked Jack Warner to give it to Andrews, but when informed that it would either be her or Elizabeth Taylor, who was also vying for the part, she accepted the role.[citation needed] Rex Harrison called Audrey Hepburn his favourite leading lady, although he initially felt she was badly miscast as Eliza (many accounts[specify] indicate that she became great friends with British actress and dancer Kay Kendall, who was Harrison's wife).


Hepburn and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.The casting of a non-singer in the lead role of a major musical proved to be very controversial. Several critics[specify] felt that Hepburn was not believable as a Cockney flower girl, and that at 35 she was rather old for the part since Eliza was supposed to be about 20. However, according to an article in Soundstage magazine, "Everyone agreed that if Julie Andrews was not to be in the film, Audrey Hepburn was the perfect choice".[43]

Hepburn recorded vocals, but was later told that her vocals would be replaced by Marni Nixon. She walked off the set but returned early the next day to apologise for her "wicked" behaviour.[citation needed] Footage of several songs with Hepburn's original vocals still exist and have been included in documentaries and the DVD release of the film, though to date, only Nixon's renditions have been released on LP and CD. Some of her original vocals remained in the film: a section of "Just You Wait", one line of a verse to "I Could Have Danced All Night" and the reprise of "Just You Wait". When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, "You could tell, couldn't you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted ... next time —" She bit her lip to keep from saying any more.[39]

Aside from the dubbing, many critics agreed that Hepburn's performance was excellent. Gene Ringgold said, "Audrey Hepburn is magnificent. She is Eliza for the ages".[43]

The controversy over Hepburn's casting reached its height at the 1964–65 Academy Awards season, when Hepburn was not nominated for best actress while Andrews was, for Mary Poppins. The media tried to play up a rivalry between the two actresses as the ceremony approached, even though both women denied any such bad feelings existed and got along well. Andrews won the award.

Two for the Road was a non-linear and innovative movie tracing the course of a troubled marriage. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was more free and happy than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to Albert Finney.[44]

Wait Until Dark in 1967 was a difficult film. It was an edgy thriller in which Hepburn played the part of a blind woman being terrorised. In addition, it was produced by Mel Ferrer and filmed on the brink of their divorce. Hepburn is said to have lost fifteen pounds under the stress. On the bright side, she found co-star Richard Crenna to be very funny, and she had a lot to laugh about with director Terence Young. They both joked that he had shelled his favourite star 23 years before; he had been a British Army tank commander during the Battle of Arnhem. Hepburn's performance was nominated for an Academy Award.

Final rolesFrom 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Hepburn decided to devote more time to her family and acted only occasionally. After her divorce from Ferrer, she married Italian psychiatrist Dr. Andrea Dotti and had a second son, Luca, in 1970. Hepburn endured a difficult pregnancy that required near-total bed rest. After her separation from Dotti, she attempted a comeback, co-starring with Sean Connery in the period piece Robin and Marian in 1976, which was moderately successful.

In 1979, Hepburn took the lead role of Elizabeth Roffe in the international production of Bloodline, re-teaming with director Terence Young (Wait Until Dark). She shared top billing with co-stars Ben Gazzara, James Mason and Romy Schneider. Author Sidney Sheldon revised his novel when it was reissued to tie into the film, making her character a much older woman to better match the actress' age. The film, an international intrigue amid the jet-set, was a critical and box office failure.

Hepburn's last starring role in a cinematic film was with Ben Gazzara in the 1981 comedy They All Laughed, directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The film was overshadowed by the murder of one of its stars, Bogdanovich's girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten; the film was released after Stratten's death but only in limited runs. In 1987, she co-starred with Robert Wagner in a tongue-in-cheek made-for-television caper film, Love Among Thieves, which borrowed elements from several of Hepburn's films, most notably Charade and How to Steal a Million.

Hepburn's last motion picture role, a cameo appearance, was as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always, filmed in 1988. This film was only moderately successful. In the early 1990s, Hepburn completed two entertainment-related projects: In the spring and summer of 1990, she filmed her final performance before cameras, on location in seven countries, as host of the television documentary series entitled Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn. A one-hour special preceded the series, debuting on PBS in March 1991. The series' debut on PBS, for which she was posthumously awarded an Emmy, followed in 1993 the day after her death. In 1992, she recorded a spoken word album, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales featuring readings of classic children's stories, which would win her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.

Personal life
In 1952, she was engaged to the young James Hanson.[45] She called it "love at first sight;" however, after having her wedding dress fitted and the date set, she decided the marriage would not work, because the demands of their careers would keep them apart most of the time.[46] In the early 1950s, she dated future Hair producer Michael Butler.[47] Hepburn married twice, first to American actor Mel Ferrer, and then to an Italian doctor, Andrea Dotti. She had a son with each – Sean in 1960 by Ferrer, and Luca in 1970 by Dotti. Her elder son's godfather was the novelist A. J. Cronin, who resided near Hepburn in Lucerne.

Hepburn met Mel Ferrer at a party hosted by Gregory Peck. She had seen him in the film Lili and was captivated by his performance.[48] Ferrer later sent Hepburn the script for the play Ondine and Hepburn agreed to play the role. Rehearsals started in January 1954 and Hepburn and Ferrer were married on 24 September.[49] Hepburn claimed that they were inseparable and were very happy together, despite the insistence from gossip columns that the marriage would not last. She did, however, admit that he had a bad temper.[50] Ferrer was rumoured to be too controlling of Hepburn and had been referred to by others as being her Svengali--an accusation that Hepburn laughed off.[51], William Holden was quoted as saying, "I think Audrey allows Mel to think he influences her".

Before having their first child, Hepburn had two miscarriages, the first in March 1955.[citation needed] In 1959, while filming The Unforgiven, she broke her back after falling off a horse onto a rock. She spent weeks in the hospital and later had a miscarriage that was said to have been induced by physical and mental stress. While she was resting at home, Mel Ferrer brought her the fawn from the movie Green Mansions to keep as a pet. They called him Ip, short for Pippin.

One year after Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to President John F. Kennedy, Hepburn, the President's favourite actress, sang "Happy Birthday, Dear Jack" to him, on what turned out to be his final birthday (29 May 1963).[52]

Hepburn had several pets, including a Yorkshire Terrier named Mr. Famous, who was hit by a car and killed. To cheer her up, Mel Ferrer got her another Yorkshire named Assam of Assam. She also kept Ip; they made a bed for him out of a bathtub. Sean Ferrer had a Cocker Spaniel named Cokey. When Hepburn was older, she had two Jack Russell Terriers. The marriage to Ferrer lasted 14 years, until 5 December 1968; their son was quoted as saying that Hepburn had stayed in the marriage too long. The couple separated before divorcing.


Hepburn and Andrea DottiShe met Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to some Greek ruins. She believed she would have more children, and possibly stop working. She married him on 18 January 1969. Although Dotti loved Hepburn and was well-liked by Sean, who called him "fun", he began having affairs with younger women. The marriage lasted thirteen years and ended in 1982, when Hepburn felt Luca and Sean were old enough to handle life with a single mother.[citation needed] Though Hepburn broke off all contact with Ferrer (she would only speak to him twice in the remainder of her life), she remained in touch with Dotti for the benefit of Luca. Andrea Dotti died in October 2007 from complications of a colonoscopy. Mel Ferrer died of heart failure in June 2008 at the age of ninety.

Hepburn was much more careful when she was pregnant with Luca in 1969; she rested for months and passed the time by painting before delivering Luca by caesarean section. Hepburn had her final miscarriage in 1974.[53] Hepburn is associated with the poem "Time-Tested Beauty Tips" (although the author is humourist Sam Levenson),[54] which she used to recite to her sons. The poem includes verses such as, "For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day", and, "For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry".

From 1980 until her death, she lived with the actor Robert Wolders. She died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland at the age of 63.[55][56][57]

Work for UNICEFSoon after Hepburn's final film role, she was appointed goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Grateful for her own good fortune after enduring the German occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. Hepburn's travels were made easier by her wide knowledge of languages; she spoke seven languages fluently, including French, Italian, Spanish, English, Dutch, and German.[58]

Though she had done work for UNICEF in the 1950s, starting in 1954 with radio presentations, this was a much higher level of dedication. Those close to her[who?] say that the thoughts of dying, helpless children consumed her for the rest of her life. Her first field mission was to Ethiopia in 1988. She visited an orphanage in Mek'ele that housed 500 starving children and had UNICEF send food. Of the trip, she said, "I have a broken heart. I feel desperate. I can't stand the idea that two million people are in imminent danger of starving to death, many of them children, [and] [sic] not because there isn't tons of food sitting in the northern port of Shoa. It can't be distributed. Last spring, Red Cross and UNICEF workers were ordered out of the northern provinces because of two simultaneous civil wars... I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering".[59]

In August 1988, Hepburn went to Turkey on an immunization campaign. She called Turkey "the loveliest example" of UNICEF's capabilities. Of the trip, she said, "the army gave us their trucks, the fishmongers gave their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad".[citation needed]

In October, Hepburn went to South America. In Venezuela and Ecuador, Hepburn told the United States Congress, "I saw tiny mountain communities, slums, and shantytowns receive water systems for the first time by some miracle – and the miracle is UNICEF. I watched boys build their own schoolhouse with bricks and cement provided by UNICEF".

Hepburn toured Central America in February 1989, and met with leaders in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In April, Hepburn visited Sudan with Wolders as part of a mission called "Operation Lifeline". Because of civil war, food from aid agencies had been cut off. The mission was to ferry food to southern Sudan. Hepburn said, "I saw but one glaring truth: These are not natural disasters but man-made tragedies for which there is only one man-made solution – peace".[citation needed]

In October, Hepburn and Wolders went to Bangladesh. John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her – she was like the Pied Piper".

In October 1990, Hepburn went to Vietnam in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunization and clean water programmes.

In September 1992, four months before she died, Hepburn went to Somalia. Hepburn called it "apocalyptic" and said, "I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this". "The earth is red – an extraordinary sight – that deep terracotta red. And you see the villages, displacement camps and compounds, and the earth is all rippled around them like an ocean bed. And those were the graves. There are graves everywhere. Along the road, around the paths that you take, along the riverbeds, near every camp – there are graves everywhere".[citation needed]

Though scarred by what she had seen, Hepburn still had hope. "Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics". "Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist. I have seen the miracle of water which UNICEF has helped to make a reality. Where for centuries young girls and women had to walk for miles to get water, now they have clean drinking water near their homes. Water is life, and clean water now means health for the children of this village". "People in these places don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognize the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump UNICEF".

In 1992, United States President George H. W. Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded her The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity. This was awarded posthumously, with her son accepting on her behalf.

Death
Grave of Audrey Hepburn in Tolochenaz, SwitzerlandIn 1992, when Hepburn returned to Switzerland from her visit to Somalia, she began to feel abdominal pains. She went to specialists and received inconclusive results, so she decided to have it examined while on a trip to Los Angeles in October.

On 1 November, doctors performed a laparoscopy and discovered abdominal cancer that had spread from her appendix.[60] It had grown slowly over several years, and metastasised not as a tumour, but as a thin coating over her small intestine. The doctors performed surgery and then put Hepburn through 5-fluorouracil Leucovorin chemotherapy.[61] A few days later, she had an obstruction. Medication was not enough to dull the pain, so on 1 December, she underwent surgery a second time. After one hour, the surgeon decided that the cancer had spread too far and could not be removed.

Because Hepburn was unable to fly on a commercial aircraft, Givenchy arranged for Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon to send her private Gulfstream jet, filled with flowers, to take Hepburn from California to Switzerland.[62] Hepburn died of cancer on 20 January 1993( 1993-01-20), in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland, and was interred there. After her death, Gregory Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favourite poem, "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore.[63]

At the time of her death, she was involved with Robert Wolders, a Dutch actor who was the widower of film star Merle Oberon. She had met Wolders through a friend, in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti. After Hepburn's divorce was final, she and Wolders started their lives together, although they never married. In 1989, after nine years with him, she called them the happiest years of her life. "Took me long enough," she said in an interview with Barbara Walters. Walters then asked why they never married. Hepburn replied that they were married, just not formally.
(Wikipedia)

Audrey Hepburn in "back in black"