Clare Leighton

She was baptised with the name Clare Marie Veronica Leighton on 26 May 1898 at All Saints' Church in St John's Wood.

"[6] Her early efforts at painting were encouraged by her father and her uncle Jack Leighton, an artist and illustrator.

Over the course of a long and prolific career, Leighton wrote and illustrated numerous books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land.

[10] During the 1920s and 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial and urban, Leighton continued to paint rural working men and women.

Examples of her work were included in 'Print and Prejudice: Women Printmakers, 1700-1930', an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London during 2022 and 2023.

[12] Three of Leighton's woodcuts for H. R. Williamson's The Flowering Hawthorn (1962) were selected by Adam Stout to illustrate his 2020 book on the Glastonbury Thorn.

[14] When Brailsford's wife died in 1937, leaving the way clear for the couple to marry, he suffered an emotional breakdown, destroying his relationship with Leighton who left for a new life in the US in 1939.