Download or read book The Sphinx written by Hugo Vickers and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **The Times and Sunday Times Books of the Year 2020** **The Times Best Biography Audiobook of the Year 2021** 'Vickers gives breathing, alarming life to a woman who puzzled and thrilled her contemporaries' SUNDAY TIMES 'Best Paperbacks of 2021' 'A continuously astonishing and ultimately moving account of a unique figure, the stuff of great literature' Simon Callow, SUNDAY TIMES 'Gripping . . . jaw-dropping story, brilliantly told' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, THE TIMES 'Mr. Vickers, with his sharp eye for detail, splendidly captures the drama of Gladys's life and the amazing cast of characters she encountered' WALL STREET JOURNAL 'This biography is truly wonderful - a masterclass in storytelling' SUNDAY TIMES 'The most extraordinary, rackety life' William Boyd, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Richly anecdotal and oddly captivating' Miranda Seymour, FINANCIAL TIMES 'At the end of the book the reader can only say, "Whew! What a story!"' Anne de Courcy, SPECTATOR 'Hugo Vickers's life of Gladys Marlborough is an extraordinary and tragic story, with special resonance today' EVENING STANDARD ******************* One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled and puzzled the glittering social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881, Gladys emerged from a traumatic childhood - her father having shot her mother's lover dead when Gladys was only eleven - to captivate and inspire some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Epoque. 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. In 1921, when Gladys was forty, she achieved the wish she had held since the age of fourteen to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, then freshly divorced from fellow American Consuelo Vanderbilt. Gladys's circle now included Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill, who described her as 'a strange, glittering being'. But life at Blenheim was not a success: when the Duke evicted her in 1933, the only remaining signs of Gladys were two sphinxes bearing her features on the west terraces and mysterious blue eyes in the grand portico. She became a recluse, and the wax injections she'd had to straighten her nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. Gladys was to spend her last years in the psycho-geriatric ward of a mental hospital, where she was discovered by a young Hugo Vickers. Intrigued and compelled to unmask the truth of her mysterious life, Vickers visited her over the course of two years, eventually publishing Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough, a biography of her life - and his first book - in 1979, two years after Gladys's death. Forty years on, Vickers has now completely rewritten and revised his original biography, updating it with previously unavailable material and drawing on his own personal research all over Europe and America. He once asked Gladys, 'Where is Gladys Deacon?' She answered him slowly, 'Gladys Deacon? . . . She never existed.' The Sphinx is a fascinating portrait of this elusive but brilliant woman who was at the centre of a now bygone era of wealth and privilege - and a tribute to one of the brightest stars of her age.
Download or read book Gladys Duchess of Marlborough written by Hugo Vickers and published by Holt McDougal. This book was released on 1980 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gladys Marie Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (née Deacon; 1881? 1977), was a US socialite famous for her good looks. She was the mistress and later the second wife of Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough. Born in Paris, Gladys Marie Deacon was the daughter of Edward Deacon and his wife Florence, daughter of Admiral Charles H. Baldwin. She had three sisters and a brother who died in infancy. Her father was imprisoned after shooting her mother's lover to death in 1892 and the girl was sent to school at the Convent de l?Assomption at Auteuil. After Edward's release from prison, Florence abducted Gladys from the convent. The couple was divorced in 1893 and the custody of the three older children, including Gladys, was given to Edward. He took them to the United States, where Deacon remained for the next three years. Edward Deacon soon became mentally unstable and was hospitalised at McLean Hospital, dying there in 1901. Deacon and her sisters returned to France to live with their mother.
Download or read book I ll See You in Paris written by Michelle Gable and published by A Thomas Dunne Book for St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'll see you in Paris is based on the rich and storied real life of Gladys Spencer-Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough. Nearly a century after Gladys' heyday, a young woman's quest to understand the legendary duchess takes her from a charming hamlet in the English countryside, to a dilapidated manse kept behind barbed wire, and ultimately to Paris. In the end, she not only solves the riddle of the duchess, but also uncovers the missing pieces in her own life." -- p.4 of cover.
Download or read book The Sphinx written by Hugo Vickers and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **The Times and Sunday Times Books of the Year 2020** **The Times Best Biography Audiobook of the Year 2021** 'Vickers gives breathing, alarming life to a woman who puzzled and thrilled her contemporaries' SUNDAY TIMES 'Best Paperbacks of 2021' 'A continuously astonishing and ultimately moving account of a unique figure, the stuff of great literature' Simon Callow, SUNDAY TIMES 'Gripping . . . jaw-dropping story, brilliantly told' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, THE TIMES 'Mr. Vickers, with his sharp eye for detail, splendidly captures the drama of Gladys's life and the amazing cast of characters she encountered' WALL STREET JOURNAL 'This biography is truly wonderful - a masterclass in storytelling' SUNDAY TIMES 'The most extraordinary, rackety life' William Boyd, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Richly anecdotal and oddly captivating' Miranda Seymour, FINANCIAL TIMES 'At the end of the book the reader can only say, "Whew! What a story!"' Anne de Courcy, SPECTATOR 'Hugo Vickers's life of Gladys Marlborough is an extraordinary and tragic story, with special resonance today' EVENING STANDARD ******************* One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled and puzzled the glittering social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881, Gladys emerged from a traumatic childhood - her father having shot her mother's lover dead when Gladys was only eleven - to captivate and inspire some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Epoque. 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. In 1921, when Gladys was forty, she achieved the wish she had held since the age of fourteen to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, then freshly divorced from fellow American Consuelo Vanderbilt. Gladys's circle now included Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill, who described her as 'a strange, glittering being'. But life at Blenheim was not a success: when the Duke evicted her in 1933, the only remaining signs of Gladys were two sphinxes bearing her features on the west terraces and mysterious blue eyes in the grand portico. She became a recluse, and the wax injections she'd had to straighten her nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. Gladys was to spend her last years in the psycho-geriatric ward of a mental hospital, where she was discovered by a young Hugo Vickers. Intrigued and compelled to unmask the truth of her mysterious life, Vickers visited her over the course of two years, eventually publishing Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough, a biography of her life - and his first book - in 1979, two years after Gladys's death. Forty years on, Vickers has now completely rewritten and revised his original biography, updating it with previously unavailable material and drawing on his own personal research all over Europe and America. He once asked Gladys, 'Where is Gladys Deacon?' She answered him slowly, 'Gladys Deacon? . . . She never existed.' The Sphinx is a fascinating portrait of this elusive but brilliant woman who was at the centre of a now bygone era of wealth and privilege - and a tribute to one of the brightest stars of her age.
Download or read book Alice written by Hugo Vickers and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-03-28 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of the mother-in-law of the present queen of England ... bridging the tumultuous history of 20th century Europe and intertwined with the tragedy and glory of that era.
Download or read book Malice in Wonderland written by Hugo Vickers and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The witty and perceptive diaries kept by Cecil Beaton's authorized biographer during his many fascinating encounters with extraordinary—often legendary—characters in his search for the real Cecil Beaton. 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. 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. And not only Beaton's friends - Vickers sought out the enemies too, notably Irene Selznick. He was taken under the wings of Lady Diana Cooper, Clarissa Avon and Diana Vreeland. Drawn into Beaton's world and accepted by its members, Vickers the emerging biographer also began his own personal adventure. The outsider became the insider - Beaton's friends became his friends. Malice in Wonderland is a fascinating portrait of a now disappeared world, and vividly and sensitively portrays some of its most fascinating characters as we travel with Vickers on his quest.
Download or read book The Face on the Sphinx written by Daphne Vivian Fielding and published by Hamish Hamilton. This book was released on 1978 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Duchess written by Karen S. Harper and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 2019 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagines the life of American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt as the reluctant and bullied bride of the Duke of Marlborough before she finds the inner strength to fight for women's equality.
Download or read book Heiresses written by Laura Thompson and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Laura Thompson returns with Heiresses, a fascinating look at the lives of heiresses throughout history and the often tragic truth beneath the gilded surface. Heiresses: surely they are among the luckiest women on earth. Are they not to be envied, with their private jets and Chanel wardrobes and endless funds? Yet all too often those gilded lives have been beset with trauma and despair. Before the 20th century a wife’s inheritance was the property of her husband, making her vulnerable to kidnap, forced marriages, even confinement in an asylum. And in modern times, heiresses fell victim to fortune-hunters who squandered their millions. Heiresses tells the stories of these million dollar babies: Mary Davies, who inherited London’s most valuable real estate, and was bartered from the age of twelve; Consuelo Vanderbilt, the original American “Dollar Heiress”, forced into a loveless marriage; Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress who married seven times and died almost penniless; and Patty Hearst, heiress to a newspaper fortune who was arrested for terrorism. However, there are also stories of independence and achievement: Angela Burdett-Coutts, who became one of the greatest philanthropists of Victorian England; Nancy Cunard, who lived off her mother's fortune and became a pioneer of the civil rights movement; and Daisy Fellowes, elegant linchpin of interwar high society and noted fashion editor. Heiresses is about the lives of the rich, who—as F. Scott Fitzgerald said—are ‘different’. But it is also a bigger story about how all women fought their way to equality, and sometimes even found autonomy and fulfillment.
Download or read book A Weekend at Blenheim written by J. P. Morrissey and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this enthralling and atmospheric tale of murder, revenge and redemption, a young American struggles to make sense of a world he does not understand, where the price of acceptance may be murder. John Vanbrugh is an outsider in the England of 1905: A determined but unsuccessful American architect, he has moved to London to make a new life for himself and his wife, Margaret. When he receives an unexpected summons to meet the dazzling Duchess of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace, he is skeptical. The young duchess, Vanbrugh comes to understand, has her reasons. Like him, she is American-born: Consuelo Vanderbilt, one of the richest debutantes in America. Seemingly on impulse, the duchess hires Vanbrugh to renovate her rooms at Blenheim - a plum job Vanbrugh accepts. He and his wife join the weekend party at Blenheim, a group that includes the foul-tempered duke; his young cousin Winston Churchill; the society painter John Singer Sargent; the duchess' mother and American suffragette Mrs. O.H.P.Belmont; Gladys Deacon, an American friend of the duchess'; and the enigmatic Catholic Monsignor Vay de Vaya. Almost as soon as he begins work at Blenheim, Vanbrugh uncovers a series of unsettling letters that hint at a long-concealed deceit. As he tries to grasp the meaning of this discovery, a sketchbook owned by Sargent is stolen and a young housemaid is found in the courtyard, strangled. It is then that Vanbrugh realizes he is caught in a maze of duplicity and manipulation with no way out. Struggling to uncover the treachery he sees around him, Vanbrugh is forced to re-evaluate everything he thought about Blenheim, himself, even the very nature of truth. Part mystery, part gothic morality tale, A Weekend at Blenheim is a compelling, mesmerizing, deeply satisfying novel.
Download or read book The Sphinx written by HUGO. VICKERS and published by Hodder Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Kin written by Shawna Kay Rodenberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores the richness and dignity of Appalachian life ... [Rodenberg's] stories of lives that are generally overlooked make for essential reading."--The Washington Post “Kin moved me, disturbed me, and hypnotized me in ways very few memoirs have." –Rosanne Cash A heart stopping memoir of a wrenching Appalachian girlhood and a multilayered portrait of a misrepresented people, from Rona Jaffe Writer's Award winner Shawna Kay Rodenberg. When Shawna Kay Rodenberg was four, her father, fresh from a ruinous tour in Vietnam, spirited her family from their home in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to Minnesota, renouncing all of their earthly possessions to live in the Body, an off-the-grid End Times religious community. Her father was seeking a better, safer life for his family, but the austere communal living of prayer, bible study and strict regimentation was a bad fit for the precocious Shawna. Disciplined harshly for her many infractions, she was sexually abused by a predatory adult member of the community. Soon after the leader of the Body died and revelations of the sexual abuse came to light, her family returned to the same Kentucky mountains that their ancestors have called home for three hundred years. It is a community ravaged by the coal industry, but for all that, rich in humanity, beauty, and the complex knots of family love. Curious, resourceful, rebellious, Shawna ultimately leaves her mountain home but only as she masters a perilous balancing act between who she has been and who she will become. Kin is a mesmerizing memoir of survival that seeks to understand and make peace with the people and places that were survived. It is above all about family-about the forgiveness and love within its bounds-and generations of Appalachians who have endured, harmed, and held each other through countless lifetimes of personal and regional tragedy.
Download or read book Gladys Duchess of Marlborough written by Hugo Vickers and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 1979 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Gladys Deacon, an American beauty who dazzled European society at the turn of the 20th century.
Download or read book Blenheim and the Churchill Family written by Henrietta Spencer-Churchill and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every history buff wishes that walls could talk. In this first book ever written about Blenheim and the Churchills by a family member, Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill explores the relationship between one of history's most important families and its ancestral home. As though perusing a family album, she conveys the family's exceptional history and how each generation changed the estate and how it changed them. Momentous events that changed the course of history are recounted as family reminiscences. Blenheim was a reward from Queen Anne to the first Duke of Marlborough for saving much of Europe from the domination of Louis XIV, and instantly became the family's center stage. Sir Winston Churchill was born in a back bedroom to his American-born mother, Jennie Jerome. Later, he directed Britain's World War II efforts from its study. Blenheim has witnessed some of history's most colorful characters including the ancestors of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American heiress who conquered British high society.Widely considered England's finest example of baroque architecture, this is a rare glimpse into parts of the house never seen on public tours, and no history buff or visitor will want to be without this remarkable guide.
Download or read book Behind Closed Doors written by Hugo Vickers and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author has had a fascination with the story of the Duchess of Windsor since he was a young man. This book brings a fresh perspective on the story by focussing on the later years of exile: the criminal exploitation of an old sick woman after the death of her husband. She was ruthlessly exploited by a French lawyer called Suzanne Blum. Some members of the Royal Family, like Mountbatten and the Queen Mother, don't emerge with much credit, either. Using previously unpublished papers and other personal testaments, Hugo Vickers relates a tragic story which has lost none of its resonance over the years since the Duchess died in 1986.
Download or read book Blood and Guts written by Richard Hollingham and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-12-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously un dreamed of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in thirty seconds—from first cut to final stitch. Innovations such as Joseph Lister's antiseptic technique, the first open-heart surgery, and Walter Freeman's lobotomy operations, among other breakthroughs, are brought to life in these pages in vivid detail. This is popular science writing at it's best.
Download or read book Loving Garbo written by Hugo Vickers and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greta Garbo's enduring legend derives from her incandescent performances as a woman in love in such classics as Camille, Queen Christina and Grand Hotel. For half a century her apparently reclusive existence enhanced her reputation as a remote and enigmatic screen goddess. Now, in this beautifully illustrated book, Hugo Vickers tells the remarkable story of Greta Garbo and of the two love affairs that dominated her life: with Cecil Beaton and the notorious Mercedes de Acosta. It is a highly revealing portait of an exotic world - at its centre, an enthrallign and demanding star who gave little in return.
