Duncan Fallowell and April Ashley - April Ashley's Odyssey

1982, April Ashley, Coccinelle, Duncan Fallowell, English,

Full title: "April Ashley's Odyssey" by Duncan Fallowell and April Ashley.

It was the first biography of April Ashley, written by Duncan Fallowell and April Ashley herself. April Ashley (1935–2021) was an English model, actress, cabaret artist, and celebrity. Outed as a transgender woman by The Sunday People newspaper in 1961, she was one of the earliest British people known to have undergone gender reassignment surgery.

After a short episode in the Merchant Navy, she started cross-dressing and she moved to Paris in the late 1950s, using the name Toni April. She joined the entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the famous drag cabaret at the Caroussel Theatre.

At the age of 25, she underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1960, performed in Casablanca, Morocco, by Georges Burou. After returning to Britain, she started using the name April Ashley and became a successful fashion model, appearing in many fashion magazines.

Unfortunately, a friend sold her story to the media in 1961 and The Sunday People outed Ashley as a trans woman, which stopped her promising career. In 1963, she married Arthur Corbett, a British aristocrat, but the marriage soon ended, giving rise to a legal dispute that ended with the annulment of the marriage in the famous court case of Corbett vs Corbett.

She died at home on 27 December 2021, at the age of 86. In my opinion, she is one of the most inspirational transgender women in the history of our movement. Her story was presented in 'I Am A Woman Now' (formerly Casablanca Revisited), a 2011 documentary about the first generation of transgender women that underwent gender reassignment surgery in the Casablanca clinic of Georges Burou.

Available via abebooks.co.uk

and Wikipedia