Celia Imrie is one of life’s gamblers. Not in the money sense, although she did just go with her three sisters to Royal Ascot to pay homage to their late mother, who enjoyed the horses and took each of them as a treat when they turned 17. “I miss her terribly,” says Imrie.
“She was extraordinary.” No, Imrie is a gambler in the sense of embracing the unexpected. Already a world-renowned actress, with an Olivier Award and plenty of stage and screen credits to her name, from Hedda Gabler with Glenda Jackson , to British blockbusters Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , she published her first novel at the age of 62 after someone suggested fiction writing one day.
It was following the publication of her memoir The Happy Hoofer in 2011, and she just thought “Why not?”. Her gently comic 2015 debut Not Quite Nice – Nice as in the French Riviera, where she has a home – became a bestseller and nine years later aged 71, she is publishing her fifth novel, Meet Me At Rainbow Corner . It’s an extremely enjoyable historical novel (actor and writer Fidelis Morgan researched and collaborated on it) about Dot and Lilly, two friends in the Second World War who meet at the American Red Cross club, where GIs wowed English girls with their tales of Hollywood and access to American treats such as doughnuts and waffles, just as rationing was making life pretty miserable for the Brits.
It’s inspired by the letters of Morgan’s mother, who was engaged to three GI.
