The novelist and former editor of French Vogue, Edmonde Charles-Roux, who has died aged 95, was a fearsome arbiter of French literary life, journalism and fashion, and a queenly figure in her native Marseille. She was also – she teased her fellow grandees – a Foreign Legion corporal twice wounded under fire.
Her father was François Charles-Roux, a wealthy industrialist and diplomat from an old Marseille family; he, his wife, Sabine (nee Gounelle), and their three children lived in Cairo, Istanbul, London, Prague, St Petersburg and then in Rome, where François was ambassador to the Vatican until recalled on the declaration of the second world war. Edmonde, who was 19 when war began, took a nursing diploma and volunteered for a Foreign Legion ambulance unit. She stayed at her post when wounded as the field hospital in Verdun was bombed during the German advance, and the legion made her an honorary corporal.
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