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At the turn of the last century, the French Riviera was mostly a winter destination for those in colder climates. It turns out that "fun in the sun" and "playground for the rich" are fairly modern concepts, but in a brilliant real estate move, American actress Maxine Elliott created both. Her waterfront Château de l'Horizon, constructed in 1932, became a veritable clubhouse for the rich, famous, and powerful on both sides of the Atlantic. Alicia takes us through some of the more notable personages, stories, and affairs from the heyday of the Château de l'Horizon, under Maxine Elliott's ownership, and later that of Prince Aly Khan. Among the luminaries who appear in this episode: Gerald and Sara Murphy; King Edward VII; William Montagu, 9th Duke of Manchester; George Keppel; Alice Keppel; Jennie Jerome Churchill; Winston Churchill; Elsie de Wolfe; Prince George, Duke of Kent; J.P. Morgan; King George V; King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson; Cecil Beaton; Cimmie Mosley; Picasso; Prime Minister David Lloyd George; the Aga Khan; Clark Gable; George Bernard Shaw; Lady Diana Cooper; Lady Doris Castlerosse; Daisy Fellows; Marion Davies; Edwina Mountbatten, Countess of Burma; The Mitford Sisters (and their brother); Randolph Churchill Jr.; Evelyn Waugh; Gloria Guinness; Kick Kennedy; Prince Aly Khan; Pamela Churchill; Rita Hayworth; Gianni Agnelli; JFK and Jackie Kennedy; Aristotle Onassis; Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, just to name a few. Listen ad-free at patreon.com/trashyroyalspodcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, we explore the life and legend of Maxine Elliott, builder and operator of the most hopping spot on the French Riviera for decades, the Chateau de l 'Horizon. A gathering spot for the famous and infamous, this home played host to many in its time – from political leaders to Hollywood stars to royalty. A few folks included in our cast this week: Lady Doris Castlerosse, Winston Churchill, Lady Diana Cooper, Daisy Fellowes, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, Prince Aly Khan, the Kennedy family, and Elizabeth Taylor too! All sources can be found at doneanddone.com. Continue your investigation ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon! Listen to Eartha Kitt perform C'est Si Bon on YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In the spirit of Plato's Symposium, the Slightly Foxed team enter into lively dialogue with two distinguished magazine editors, Tom Hodgkinson of the Idler and Harry Mount of the Oldie, and learn lessons from notable loafers in literature. We begin with Doctor Johnson, an icon of indolence who wrote an essay called ‘The Idler' and liked time to ponder; this lazy lexicographer claimed his dictionary would take three years to write when in fact it would take nine . . . The wisdom-loving philosophers of Ancient Greece made a case for carving out leisure time, while the anchorite Julian of Norwich favoured a life of seclusion in which ‘all shall be well'. At the age of thirty-eight Michel de Montaigne retired to a grand book-filled chateau to test out ideas in essays, while George Orwell wrote book reviews in hungover misery. Izaak Walton found contemplation in The Compleat Angler and Jerome K. Jerome found humour in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, while the autodidactic Mitford sisters sought wild freedom. We enjoy a leisurely spell with loungers in fiction, visiting Lady Bertram and her pug in Mansfield Park, taking to Lady Diana Cooper's bed in A Handful of Dust, retreating to Aunt Ada Doom's room in Cold Comfort Farm, settling into the quiet comfort of Mycroft Holmes's Diogenes Club and meeting Thomas Love Peacock's Honourable Mr Listless along the way. And, to finish, there are the usual wide-ranging reading recommendations for when you have an idle moment. (Episode duration: 46 minutes; 56 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (9:49) Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays (11:48) Sarah Bakewell, How to Live (13:05) Plato, Symposium (17:51) Janina Ramirez, Julian of Norwich (18:58) Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (26:53) Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (28:21) Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat; Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow is out of print (29:44) Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy will be available in a new edition in July 2022 (32:29) Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (34:41) Geoffrey Willans, The Lost Diaries of Nigel Molesworth is out of print (39:51) Gamel Woolsey, Death's Other Kingdom (40:40) Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (42:29) David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (43:28) Jane Smiley, The Strays of Paris (46:56) Related Slightly Foxed Articles ‘Study to be quiet', Ken Haigh on Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, Issue 54 (9:49) The Great Self-Examiner, Anthony Wells on the essays of Michel de Montaigne, Issue 69 (11:48) Poste-Freudian Therapy, Michele Hanson on Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm, Issue 10 (34:41) Peacock's Progress, J. W. M. Thompson on Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall; Crotchet Castle, Issue 5 (42:29) Other Links The Idler magazine The Oldie magazine Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
The witty and perceptive diaries kept by Cecil Beaton's authorised 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. The resulting book, first published in 1985, was a best seller. 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.
“It’s a terrible thing being a biographer,” Artemis Cooper has said. “One is such a rat.” A consummate inquisitor of the talented, Cooper’s subjects have included food guru Elizabeth David,novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, and travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose last book she co-edited with Colin Thubron. She is also the author of Cairo in the War, 1939-1945, co-author with her husband Antony Beevor of Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, and editor of two collections of her grandmother Lady Diana Cooper’s letters, to her husband Duff and to her friend Evelyn Waugh. Cooper delivers an hour of conversation with Owen Scott discussing the concept of memory, and telling tales of the 20th-century. Supported by Heartland Bank.
--About the Lecture By 1947, the year of his first visit to America, Evelyn Waugh had wounded most of his friends. He had tried to bully John Betjeman and Lady Diana Cooper into Catholicism; he had condemned Olivia Plunket-Greene, the woman who had brought him to the Church, as a traitor to the faith; he had lampooned Cyril Connolly in mordant literary reviews. When, two years later, Nancy Mitford entertained him in Paris and he conscientiously insulted all her friends, she asked him why he needed to be so cruel. 'You have no idea,' he replied, 'how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.' This much-quoted remark from Christopher Sykes’s biography is often set alongside another. Hilaire Belloc, after a visit from Waugh, described him as 'possessed'. Waugh’s American experience, however, reveals a much more sympathetic character. In 1944, after Waugh broke a leg while learning to parachute, the army gratefully allowed him extended leave, during which he wrote Brideshead Revisited (1945). Appearing with the Armistice, it transformed his career. In America, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. At a time when most of his countrymen were suffering the austerities of the aftermath, Waugh became rich, and he had the Americans to thank for this. But he didn't. In 1947, he travelled to Hollywood to negotiate the film rights for an additional $100,000. Waugh preferred to visit Forest Lawn and the pets' cemetery to attending script conferences, so, although this trip resulted in no film, it did produce The Loved One (1948), an hilarious satire of the American Dream. Waugh's agent advised him not to publish it in the US. Waugh ignored his advice, and the book rocketed into the best-seller list. His celebrity status had never been higher there. Two more American journeys, however, present us with a quite different personality. He believed that American Catholicism was likely to be the Church's powerhouse in the post-war world, and he determined to do what he could to support it. A lecture tour was planned for January 1949. Before that, in November 1948, he went on a research trip to discuss the faith with the monks, Bishops and Professors. Less than a year after completing The Loved One, he was returning to the country his book had savaged in search of spiritual enlightenment. Everywhere he went, he amused and baffled his hosts. He would not play the celebrity game. The great art of public presentation, he felt, was that people should never know what to make of you. A contract existed between writer and public. 'The writer,' he once wrote, 'sweats to write well; the reader sweats to make dollars; writer and reader exchange books for dollars.' That was the end of the matter. He did not seek intimacy with strangers. But this was not arrogance or hypocrisy. In fact, he was withdrawing from the world, in search of contrition, compassion and humility. --About the speaker Martin Stannard is Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Leicester. He has published extensively on Evelyn Waugh, following The Critical Heritage (1984) with a biography in two volumes (1986 and 1992). His Norton edition of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier appeared in 1995 (revised 2011), and his biography of Muriel Spark in 2009. Currently he is Co-Executive Editor of OUP's 43-volume The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh, having edited Vile Bodies (2017) for this, and is researching a new biography of Ford. Prof. Stannard is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English Association. --About the Ushaw Lecture Series The Ushaw Lecture Series celebrates the cultural and research significance of the remarkable bibliographical, archival and material-cultural collections at Ushaw, and the wider history of which they are expressions. The lectures cover music, art, drama, poetry and literature, architecture, material-culture, politics, science and theology.
Desconocidas & Fascinantes: Notas de la autora, sobre Lady Diana Cooper, by InOutRadio
Libby Purves meets crossword setter John Halpern; historian and travel writer John Julius Norwich; journalist Mary Kenny and actor Imogen Stubbs. John Halpern is a crossword setter. His work features in the Guardian (under the name Paul), the Financial Times (as Mudd) and the Times (Anon). His new book, The Centenary of the Crossword, starts with the story of Arthur Wynne - a journalist from Liverpool who created the first crossword on December 21 1913. The book includes inside information about how crosswords are compiled, tips for solving different types of clues and examples of puzzles from prominent setters around the world. The Centenary of the Crossword is published by Andre Deutsch. John Julius Norwich is an historian, travel writer and broadcaster. The only son of Lady Diana and Duff Cooper, his new book features correspondence from his mother between 1939 and 1952. The letters recount her experiences during the Blitz and life with her society friends Evelyn Waugh and the Mitfords. Darling Monster - The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich is published by Chatto & Windus. Mary Kenny is an Irish journalist, author, playwright and broadcaster. She has written for over 25 newspapers over a career spanning four decades. In her new book she recalls her life from her days as a young reporter for the London Evening Standard to coping with the responsibility of being a full time carer for her husband. Something of Myself and Others is published by Liberties Press. Imogen Stubbs is an actor and writer. She discovered her passion for acting while studying at Oxford University. She is best known for her stage performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, notably as Desdemona in Othello opposite Willard White which was directed by Trevor Nunn. She is currently starring in Strangers on a Train by Craig Warner at the Gielgud Theatre, London. Producer: Paula McGinley.
Roy Plomley's castaway is writer and actress Lady Diana Cooper. Favourite track: Die Walkure - Wotan Puts Brunnhilde to Sleep by Richard Wagner Book: Volumes of her autobiography Luxury: Bag of pillows, in which she will smuggle in her dog