War, loss & finding faith 'THE EVENTS THAT SHAPED ME'

Screen legend Ilona's remarkable life reads more like a film script!

- Elisabeth Easther

My father's plane went down over the south of France in August 1945.

The village was called Villeneuve-lès-Béziers and God bless the villagers because they named a street for him. So instead of a Rue de Victor Hugo, they have a Rue du Lieutenant Rodney Maurice Rodgers.

I was one of many who lost a parent, but that's war for you. My mother was a widow, which is how she came to study hotel management in Switzerland where she met my stepfather, who was so good to me. He'd been an interrogator in the Nuremburg Trials and on de-mob day, he put on his civvy suit and flew to Lausanne, where he also trained in hotels. I was three when my mother enrolled me in L'École des Enfants, a school in the mountains that rehabilitated Dutch children born in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

We returned to England for my parents' wedding at St James, a magnificent Cristopher Wren church in Piccadilly. It'd been badly bombed and just the aisle, the altar and one side of the church remained. It's beautifully restored now, but back then there were gaping holes in the roof. As their bridesmaid, I got quite drunk under the table, sipping everyone's dregs.

After they married, I was sent to live with my grandmother Elsie. I was a terrible child - pretty and precocious, I didn't speak English properly and when I took the Pullman train to Harrogate with Elsie, halfway there she had to smack my bottom because I was being so naughty.