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£30.00
Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, wife of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, once famously said: ‘For the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing-room.’ With her impressive intellect and acerbic wit, she was a highly influential muse to many leading figures over several decades. At Oxford in the 1940s she fascinated dons and undergraduates alike. She went on to work in the film world for Alexander Korda and for George Weidenfeld at Contact Magazine. She was a close friend of Cecil Beaton, James Pope-Hennessy, Lucian Freud, Isaiah Berlin, and Lord Goodman. She fascinated Greta Garbo. After an early Bohemian life, she became a politically active wife to Eden when he was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, particularly during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Her death at 101 in 2021 has opened the way for this enthralling and revealing biography by the widely admired biographer Hugo Vickers.
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£12.99
Hugo Vickers’s life took a dramatic turn in 1979 when the legendary Sir Cecil Beaton invited him to be his authorised biographer. The excitement of working with the famous photographer was dashed only days later when Cecil Beaton died. But the journey had begun – Vickers was entrusted with Beaton’s papers, diaries and, most importantly, access to his friends and contemporaries. The resulting book, first published in 1985, was a bestseller. In ‘Malice in Wonderland’, Vickers shares excerpts from his personal diaries kept during this period. For five years, Vickers travelled the world and talked to some of the most fascinating and important social and cultural figures of the time, including royalty such as the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, film stars such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews, writers such as Truman Capote, and photographers such as Irving Penn and Horst.
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£10.99
One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled, as much as she puzzled, the glittering social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881, she suffered a traumatic childhood after her father shot her mother’s lover dead. Educated in America, she returned to Europe, where she captivated some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Ãpoque. Marcel Proust wrote of her ‘I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.’ Berenson considered marrying her, Rodin and Monet befriended her, Boldini painted her and Epstein sculpted her. She inspired love from diverse Dukes and Princes, and the interest of women such as the Comtesse Greffulhe and Gertrude Stein. It wasn’t until she was 40 that she achieved the wish she had held since the age of 14 to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough.
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£14.99
Hugo Vickers became Cecil Beaton’s authorised biographer at Beaton’s own request, and was given access to voluminous unpublished material. Here he explores the contradictions of a man addicted to fame, yet riddled with self-doubt.
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£25.00
One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled, as much as she puzzled, the glittering social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881, she suffered a traumatic childhood after her father shot her mother’s lover dead. Educated in America, she returned to Europe, where she captivated some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Ãpoque. Marcel Proust wrote of her ‘I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.’ Berenson considered marrying her, Rodin and Monet befriended her, Boldini painted her and Epstein sculpted her. She inspired love from diverse Dukes and Princes, and the interest of women such as the Comtesse Greffulhe and Gertrude Stein. It wasn’t until she was 40 that she achieved the wish she had held since the age of 14 to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough.
