The Last of the Duchess

Zusatztext “A sharply observed (and sometimes very funny) portrait of the frivolous world of wealth and luxury inhabited by the Windsors.” —Michiko Kakutani! The New York Times     “Beguiling. . . . Blackwood is witty! understated and perceptive.” — The Washington Post      “The central character in The Last of the Duchess never appears at all but! like Godot in Beckett’s play! becomes more powerful by her absence. . . . Brilliant—and brilliantly entertaining—journalism.” — Chicago Tribune   “A fierce! scintillatingly funny report on a dying social circle.” — The Independent (London) Informationen zum Autor Caroline Blackwood, who began her writing career as a journalist, is the author of nine books, which include novels, collections of short stories, and a cookbook. She was awarded the David Higham Fiction Prize for her first novel, The Stepdaughter , and her novel Great Granny Webster was recommended for the Booker Prize for Fiction shortlist in 1977. She died in 1996. Klappentext In 1980, Lady Caroline Blackwood was commissioned by The Sunday Times to write an article on the aging Duchess of Windsor, who was said to be convalescing in her French mansion in the Bois de Boulogne. Yet what began as a curiosity was to become for Blackwood one of the most challenging experiences of her writing career, launching her into a battle of wits with the Duchess's formidable lawyer, Maître Suzanne Blum. Maître Blum refused to let Blackwood near the Duchess, spinning elaborate excuses as to why she was unavailable and threatening anyone who dared suggest that she was in anything other than the best of health. Still, while Blum's machinations restricted Blackwood's ability to publish a frank interview, it only served to pique her interest in the bizarre relationship between the infamous Duchess-a woman who once inspired a king to abdicate his crown-and her eccentric, domineering gatekeeper. Sixteen years later, Blackwood turned her experiences into this riveting and excoriating modern classic about the frailties of old age, the foibles of society, and the dual-edged nature of celebrity. Introduction to the Vintage Books Edition Caroline Blackwood wrote ten books of fiction and nonfiction, one of which, Great Granny Webster, was nominated for the Booker Prize. But the “dark fairy tale” that obsessed her for the longest time—indeed for fifteen years—starred Maître Suzanne Blum, the wily, confrontational, “necrophiliac” lawyer who presided over the last decade of the almost lifeless Duchess of Windsor, locked away, bedridden behind the shutters of her villa in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, under the Maître’s jealous and sinister control. The story touched some nerves in Caroline. She was old enough to have witnessed the tail end of the Abdication Crisis of 1936. The English loathing of Wallis Simpson for “stealing” King Edward VIII was particularly strong, for largely snobbish reasons, among the upper class into which Caroline was born as daughter of the 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and Maureen Guinness, the brewing heiress. Maureen was a close friend of the Queen Mother.  “[The abdication] was . . . something so obscene and shocking that it had to be hidden from the children,” Caroline writes here. Only its denouement forty-four years later was properly shocking to Caroline and also compulsively fascinating. “Too awful, even for us” was one of her frequent phrases. She had a fearful view of real or impending disaster or horror—all irresistibly funny in the telling, including the telling of the dramas of her own life. Her daughter Ivana recalls in her memoir her mother walking  the night, “catastrophising,” rehearsing aloud her “worst nightmares.” “When you see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she warned, “it could be a train coming towards you.” Here was a story that therefore greatly appealed to ...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Caroline Blackwood, Caroline/ Fox Blackwood, James Fox
• Con la collaborazione di: James Fox (Introduzione)
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 02.10.2012
• EAN: 9780345802637
• ISBN: 978-0-345-80263-7
• Pagine: 320
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 203 mm x 17 mm
• Categoria: Saggistica > Filosofia, religione > Biografie, autobiografie