SPHINX: The Life of Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough

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, she emerged from a traumatic childhood - her father having shot her mother's lover dead when Gladys was only 11 - 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 Gertrude Stein. In 1921 when Gladys was 40, she achieved the wish she had held since the age of 14 to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, then freshly divorced from his 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 injection she had to straighten her nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. Gladys was to spend her last years in the psych-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, he visited her over the course of two years and eventually published this marvellous biography, his first book, in 1979, two years after Gladys's death. 40 years on, he has now completely rewritten and revised his original biography, updating it with previously unavailable material. We enter the heady world of the upper classes at a time of great social, artistic and political change. 388pp, paperback with photos.