Harper\'s Bazaar UK - 12.2019

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PHOTOGRAPHS: © PHILIPPE HALSMAN AND © ERICH LESSING/MAGNUM PHOTOS, JAMES MOORE, GETTY IMAGES, 20

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CENTURY FOX AND DISNEY/ALLSTAR

152 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | December 2019

here is no mistaking that voice coming down the

phone line from upstate New York. Clear as a bell,

crisp as a slice of lightly buttered toast, it is the voice

of domestic order shot through with a ripple of

mischief. You only have to hear Dame Julie Andrews

say ‘hello there’ and you are instantly in the company of Mary

Poppins and Maria von Trapp, with just a dash of Queen Clarisse

from The Princess Diaries.

Yet Andrews’ own life has not, it turns out, involved much gath-

ering of edelweiss or flying by umbrella. Eleven years ago, she

published the first volume of her memoirs, ruefully entitled Home,

which revealed the chaos of her family history. From the age of

10, the little girl with the freakishly grown-up singing voice and

a glorious top F was touring post-war Britain’s dingy music halls,

THE

HIGHEST

HEIGHTS

Julie Andrews revisits her

soaring Hollywood years in an

evocative autobiography

By KATHRYN HUGHES

BOOKS

Julie Andrews

photographed by

Philippe Halsman

in 1957

supporting her alcoholic mother and stepfather. There was anger,

violence and something even more dangerous: in her teens,

Andrews started locking her bedroom door at night to stop her

stepfather getting into bed with her.

Now, Andrews has written the second instalment of her extra-

ordinary life story. It opens in the early weeks of 1963 as she flies

from London to LA with Tony Walton, her husband and childhood

sweetheart, and their newborn baby Emma, to film Mary Poppins,

the movie that is to ensure her lasting fame. Over the next 30 years,

she experiences superstardom, divorce and a career that, inevitably,

undergoes periodic slumps. Why did it take her so long to write this

sequel to her bestselling first volume? ‘Research,’ she says briskly.

‘It took four years to work through three decades’ worth of my old

diaries. Emma was a huge help, using them to reconstruct a detailed

T