Née Aileen Freda Leatherman, wife of pioneering and legendary British film producer, Sir Michael Elias Balcon who ‘discovered’ Alfred Hitchcock in the 1920s.

References to classical and contemporary Surrealism pervade The Goddesses series of society beauties transformed into Green and Roman Goddesses, which Yevonde began in 1935. Whilst claiming in her autobiography, In Camera, that her inspiration for the series derived solely from the 18th century painters’ idea of depicting beauties as Greek Goddess, it would appear that the its immediate impetus came from the ‘‘Olympian Ball’’ held at Claridges hotel in London in March 1935.

Madame Yevonde Be Original or Die, The British Council 1998