Aunt Jemima Stanbury Anna Massey "... But there was a rich aunt, Miss Stanbury, to whom had come considerable wealth in a manner most romantic -- the little tale shall be told before this larger tale is completed -- and this aunt had undertaken to educate and place out in the world her nephew Hugh. So Hugh had been sent to Harrow, and then to Oxford, where he had much displeased his aunt by not accomplishing great things, and then had been set down to make his fortune as a barrister in London, with an allowance of 100 pounds a year, his aunt having paid, moreover, certain fees for entrance, tuition, and the like. The very hour in which Miss Stanbury learned that her nephew was writing for a penny newspaper she sent off a dispatch to tell him that he must give up her or the penny paper. He replied by saying that he felt himself called upon to earn his bread in the only line from which, as it seemed to him, bread would be forthcoming. By return of post he got another letter to say that he might draw for the quarter then becoming due, but that that would be the last. And it was the last. Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady, very much respected, indeed, in the city of Exeter... She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright grey eyes, and a strong Roman nose, and thin lips, and a sharp-cut chin. She wore a head-gear that almost amounted to a mob-cap, and beneath it her grey hair was always frizzled with the greatest care. Her dress was invariably of black silk..." Daughter of actor Raymond Massey (Dr. Leonard Gillespie in the '60s television series Dr. Kildare), award-winning actress Anna Massey was born in 1937 in Thakeham, Surrey. Veteran director John Ford was her godfather and she was briefly married to Jeremy Brett (Sherlock Holmes). As well as roles in Hitchcock's Frenzy, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and as the menacing Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, Massey won both a Bafta and a Royal Television Society Best Actress Award in 1987 for her poignant performance as Anita Brookner's romantic and lonely heroine, Edith Hope in Hotel Du Lac. He Knew He Was Right is not Massey's first Trollope -- in 1974 she played Lady Laura Standish in The Pallisers. "I've been in Trollope's world before and I think he's a brilliant writer," she comments. "I think He Knew He Was Right is wonderful, a dark and original story about love and how it can go wrong. Aunt Stanbury is the most remarkable character but a lot of people couldn't live anywhere near her! She's very demanding, very eccentric -- but people do tend to get more eccentric as they age. She's lived alone a lot of her life but I believe it's better to live alone than with the wrong person." Massey can be seen in the 2005 release Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, also starring Joan Plowright and Rupert Friend.