Merula Silvia Salaman Guinness (1914 - 2000). English artist, playwright and actress.
She was the daughter of Major Michel Hewitt Salaman, of the Royal North Devon Hussars Yeomanry, and of Chattie Baldwin Wake, the daughter of Colonel Edward Baldwin Wake of the 21st Hussars (a descendant of Hereward the Wake). She trained as an actress and dancer, working at the Old Vic under the director Michel St Denis. It was in his production of Obey's Noah in 1935 that she met Alec Guinness. They became engaged and married in 1938. In 1940 their son Matthew was born. From the 1950s the family lived at Kettlebrook Meadows, near Steep Marsh in Hampshire. The house itself was designed by Merula's brother Eusty Salaman.
After the war, she took up painting and needlework, and wrote and illustrated several children's books. Sir Alec described his wife as "the most modest person imaginable".
In 1956, Guinness converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Merula, who was of paternal Sephardi Jewish descent, followed suit in 1957.
- "It was here that he met Merula Salaman, a gawky redhead from a posh family." https://www.theguardian.com/.../oct/19/biography.features1
- "... she was not tall and blonde, but short with fuzzy red hair..." https://books.google.it/books?id=hyp2RoHMam0C&pg=PA88...
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