Christian Dupont outlines the multitalented and free-spirited life of Juanita Casey
Juanita Casey, the Irish writer, or Juanita Berlin, the British painter and printmaker? Or Joy Barlow, the adopted only daughter of a wealthy brewing family, raised on a Herefordshire farm by an uncle who told his niece that her father was British Romany and her mother an Irish Traveller, and nicknamed her after a lioness left with him by a circus troupe? Multiple sibylline identities evolved and blended through the stages of Juanita’s long, adventurous life, along with her animal art, which furnished covers and illustrations for her eventual books.