Family background

Orde was the eldest child of war artist Cuthbert Orde

Cuthbert Orde

Captain Cuthbert Julian Orde was an artist and First World War pilot. He is best known for his war art, especially his portraits of Allied Battle of Britain pilots.-Family background:...

 and Lady Eileen Wellesley, daughter of the 4th Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, 4th Duke of Wellington

Arthur Charles Wellesley, 4th Duke of Wellington, KG, GCVO, GCTE, DL was a member of the well-known Wellesley family. He joined the military and served in the Household Division...

. The name Julian had been common in the Orde family for generations, for boys and girls.

Life and work

In the 1940s, she was the girlfriend of poet WS Graham

W. S. Graham

William Sydney Graham was a Scottish poet who is often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime but, partly due to the support of Harold Pinter, his work has enjoyed a revival in recent years...

. She played Bessie in a 1946 TV version of Aimee Stuart’s Jeannie (not to be confused with the 1941 movie version

Jeannie (film)

Jeannie is a 1941 British romantic comedy film directed by Harold French.-Plot:Jeannie McLean is Scottish girl who finds that she has received an inheritance...

), and co-wrote the 1948 British movie

British films of 1948

A list of films produced in the United Kingdom in 1948:-1948:-External links:* at the Internet Movie Database...

 thriller The Small Voice.

She had poems included in Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...

's 1948 anthology The New British Poets, in whose biographical notes - as well as claiming to be a couple of years younger - she says she 'was on the stage for six years, but now writes for films and radio'. Her 1946 poem The Changing Wind was included in the 1968 Penguin anthology

Penguin poetry anthologies

The Penguin poetry anthologies, published by Penguin Books, have at times played the role of a 'third force' in British poetry, less literary than those from Faber and Faber, and less academic than those from Oxford University Press....

 Poetry of the Forties.

She married Ralph Abercrombie in London in 1949. She published poetry afterwards under name Julian Orde Abercrombie. In 1963 she wrote an episode of ATV

Associated TeleVision

Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...

’s Drama '63 series entitled The Lady And The Clerk .

Death and legacy

Her death, in 1974 aged 56, moved fellow poet David Wright

David Wright (poet)

David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

to compose On A Friend Dying. Her work continues to be read and republished. In 1988 her poem Conjurors was republished in its own pamphlet. The Florist was included in the 1995 anthology The Supernatural Index. Conjurors was again republished in the 2010 anthology A Field of Large Desires.