In 1993, Marion Barbara Casrstairs died and Kate Summerscale, obituarist at The Daily Telegraph , stumbled upon one of the most remarkable lives of the twentieth century. Born in 1900, Marion soon realised she was not as other little girls and she reinvented herself as Joe, an 'invert' who dressed like a beautiful man and became a leading light of the glamorous lesbian demi-monde. She smoked cheroots, tattooed her arms and in the twenties was celebrated as the 'fastest woman on water'- Britain's premier female speedboat-racer.