Phyllis Shand Allfrey

Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey (24 October 1908 – February 4, 1986) was a West Indian writer, socialist activist, newspaper editor and politician of the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. She is best known for her first novel, The Orchid House (1953), based on her own early life, which in 1991 was turned into a Channel 4 television miniseries in the United Kingdom.

Born in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies, in 1908 into a white elite family, she was the daughter of Francis Byam Berkeley Shand and Elfreda (née Nicholls), and was baptized Phyllis Byam. Her father's settler family was long established in Roseau as their family dominated Dominica for centuries. With roots in the West Indies going back to the 17th century, Phyllis later described herself as "a West Indian of over 300 years' standing, despite my pale face." Shand Allfrey's family included Henry Spencer Berkeley and Sir Thomas Warner. On her father's side, Shand Allfrey's ancestor was Dorothy Knollys (great-great-great granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister to the Royal Family in England.

Her mother Elfreda, was one of the daughters of Sir Henry Alfred Alford Nicholls, a famed doctor and botanist who during his career had been connected with almost every public activity on the island. His family boasted of distant connections to royalty: Phyllis's Martinican maternal grandmother, Marianne Felicite was related to Napoleon's Empress Josephine. Empress Josephine's grandfather Gaspard Joseph de Tascher and Uncle Robert-Marguerite Tascher, baron de La Pagerie were direct ancestors of Shand Allfrey. Through Empress Josephine's uncle, Shand Allfrey was a direct descendant of Jean-Henri Robert Tascher de La Pagerie, (Count Tascher de La Pagerie et de l'Empire) cousin of Josephine's. He married Marcelle Clary, the Swedish Queen's Désirée Clary's niece and had a daughter Rose Amable Julie Joséphine. Her maternal family made her closely related to anyone descended from or related to Joséphine. Additionally, the Belgian, Luxembourg, Swedish, Monégasque and former Romanian monarchs are all descended from a cousin of Joséphine's first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais, as was Vittorio Emanuele, senior-line claimant to Italy. The claimant family of Baden are also Joséphine descendants. On her mother's side of the family through the Empress Josephine connection, her family are closely related to anyone descended from her from Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Russia, Brazil and Luxembourg. This also meant on both her mother and father's side of the family, she would have been related to British Royalty through the Danish and Greek descent of Empress Josephine's family.

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