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Penrose Halson

Biography

Penrose Halson

When Penrose Halson was 25 and still unmarried, her mother sent her to the Katharine Allen Marriage & Advice Bureau. Twenty years later, after a career in teaching, writing and editing, she and her management consultant husband Bill bought the Bureau. They also acquired The Marriage Bureau, which had been set up in 1939 by two 24-year-olds. As Bill had predicted, matchmaking suited Penrose down to the ground, and they remain happily in touch with many former clients who visit them in London.

Penrose Halson

Books by Penrose Halson

The Marriage Bureau: How Two Matchmakers Arranged Love in Wartime London
by Penrose Halson - History, Nonfiction

In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined 24-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London’s Bond Street and set about the delicate business of matchmaking. Drawing on the bureau’s extensive archives, Penrose Halson --- who many years later found herself the proprietor of the bureau --- tells their story, and those of their clients. From shop girls to debutantes, widowers to war veterans, clients came in search of security, social acceptance or simply love. And thanks to the meticulous organization and astute intuition of the Bureau’s matchmakers, most found what they were looking for.