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Amaryllis Fleming: A life less ordinary

2025-11-28T09:57:00

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To mark a hundred years since the birth of Amaryllis Fleming in December 1925, Oskar Falta takes a look at the British cellist’s colourful life and influential career, and hears from one of her pupils – Raphael Wallfisch

In mid-1925, Evelyn Fleming, a war veteran’s widow and a single mother of four boys, dismissed her domestic staff and left London, embarking on a cruise abroad. When she returned several months later with an ‘adopted’ baby daughter, there seemed something fishy about it. For Evelyn, a product of the Victorian era, having an illegitimate child meant losing her wealth and social status. Until her dying day, she never acknowledged her daughter as her own. As a result, the girl who grew up to become the famed cellist Amaryllis Fleming knew neither her birthplace nor her birthday, although some speculated that she was born on 10 December 1925 somewhere in Switzerland…

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