The last of the Duchess
By: Caroline Blackwood.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9780679439707
Subjects: Windsor, Wallis Warfield, Duchess of, 1896-; Nobility -- Great Britain -- Biography
Description: This is the fascinating and startling story of journalist and novelist Caroline Blackwood's search for the late Duchess of Windsor. In 1980, the London Sunday Times commissioned Lord Snowdon to photograph the Duchess, who was then living outside of Paris, and Blackwood was asked to go along to report. But it is Maitre Suzanne Blum, one of the most powerful lawyers in France, who becomes the central figure of Blackwood's story.

Fierce and controlling, Blum holds the Duchess a virtual prisoner in her grand but now shuttered house in the Bois de Boulogne, keeping away all visitors. In Blum, Blackwood brings to life a wily old Gorgon - alternately vulnerable and ruthless, paranoid and perverse - who has begun interweaving her life with that of the Duchess.

It is from Blackwood's talks with such colorful contemporaries of the Duchess as Lady Monckton, Lady Diana Cooper, and Lady Mosley and from her own encounter with Maitre Blum that Blackwood is able to evoke brilliantly the life and exploits of Wallace Warfield Simpson Windsor as well as her bizarre and sinister relationship with Suzanne Blum.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [294]-295).