Hugo Vickers

Details the life of Great Britain's Princess Alice, who married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903, a union that plunged her into a life of turmoil, fraught with war, exile, and execution, forcing her to be placed into a sanitarium in Switzerland where she was declared a "schizophrenic paranoid," in a fascinating biography that vividly recreates the wealth, royalty, and power of the twentieth century. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Princess Andrew of Greece

Alice

Vivian Leigh

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.

My Adventures in the World of Cecil Beaton

Malice in Wonderland

At Cecil Beaton’s request, Vickers became his authorized biographer, and was granted access to voluminous unpublished material. But, because Beaton died only two days after commissioning the work, Vickers had no restrictions. The result: an instant bestseller, indispensable to anyone interested in 20th century culture. “Rich, dense, thick and tasty as a fruitcake... lovers of photography...will take their time and swallow every last crumb....An enormous, unsparing, inch-by-inch... chronicle of an English snob’s progress through the 20th century.”—Tom Wolfe, New York Times.

The Authorised Biography

Cecil Beaton

James Pope-Hennessy

'A delightful insight into an eclectic life' The Daily Telegraph 'Very funny and astute . . . a loathly feast for royal-watchers' Hilary Mantel, New Statesman Books of the Year 2018 'A complete delight, conjuring up, with a few sharp strokes of the pen, a mad, exotic species from a world gone by' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday 'Gloriously indiscreet . . . the best royal book ever' Harry Mount, Financial Times * * * When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years. Now published in full for the first time and edited by the highly admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers, this is a riveting, often hilarious portrait of the eccentric aristocracy of a bygone age. Giving much greater insight into Queen Mary than the official version, and including sharply observed encounters with, among others, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Duke of Gloucester, and a young Queen Elizabeth, The Quest for Queen Mary is set to be a classic of royal publishing.

The Quest for Queen Mary

**The Sunday Times Best 100 Summer Reads - Top 5 Best Memoirs** 'A jaw-dropping biography . . . scandal, misery and madness marked the life of this society beauty' THE TIMES, 'Best Books for Summer 2020' 'A ravishing life of Gladys Deacon, the once bewitching "goddess" of belle epoque Paris' THE SUNDAY TIMES, '5 Best Memoirs' 'A continuously astonishing and ultimately moving account of a unique figure, the stuff of great literature' Simon Callow, THE SUNDAY TIMES 'The most extraordinary, rackety life' William Boyd, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Richly anecdotal and oddly captivating book' Miranda Seymour, FINANCIAL TIMES 'At the end of the book the reader can only say, "Whew! What a story!"' Anne de Courcy, SPECTATOR 'Fascinating and very well written' Anne Glenconner, author of LADY IN WAITING ******************* 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. 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.

The Life of Gladys Deacon – Duchess of Marlborough

The Sphinx

HRH The Duke of Kent

'A pleasure to read... a timely reminder of the need for service' -- The Daily Telegraph 'The voices and reminiscence of family and friends merge seamlessly, giving the impression of gathering round the fire on a winter evening' -- The Oldie 'A remarkable memoir penned by the Duke of Kent, whose entire life has been dedicated to Queen and country... an insider's account of what it is like to be a working royal.' -- Daily Mail HRH The Duke of Kent has been at the heart of the British Royal Family throughout his life. As a working member of the Royal Family, he supported his cousin The Queen, representing her at home and abroad, until her death in 2022. His royal duties began when, in 1952, at the age of sixteen, he walked in the procession behind King George VI's coffin, later paying homage to The Queen at her Coronation in 1953. Since then he has witnessed and participated in key Royal occasions. A Royal Life is a unique account based on a series of conversations between the Duke and acclaimed Royal historian Hugo Vickers. It covers the Duke's upbringing, his army life, his royal tours and events and associations with organisations. Here too are recollections of family members including his mother, Princess Marina, his grandmother, Queen Mary, his cousin, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and his uncle, King George VI. Other members of the Royal Family contribute their memories, including his wife, the Duchess of Kent, the Duke's siblings, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael of Kent, his son, the Earl of St Andrews, his daughter, Lady Helen Taylor as well as his cousins, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Archduchess Helen of Austria and her brother, Hans Veit Toerring. Containing never before seen photographs from the Duke's private collection and a new chapter on the Platinum Jubilee and the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, A Royal Life is an unprecedented and remarkable insight into Royal history.

A Royal Life

The Memoirs of the Baron de Redé

Alexis

We Want the Queen

Harold Nicolson called her 'the greatest Queen since Cleopatra', while Cecil Beaton called her 'a marshmallow made on a welding machine'. Stephen Tennant said: 'She looked everything that she was not: gentle, gullible, tenderness mingled with dispassionate serenity, cool, well-bred, remote. Behind this veil she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.' Who was she? The Queen Mother's story has not yet been properly told. This was partly due to her long life, and the difficulty that always exists when a biography of a living person is attempted, partly because she was a queen - and the real person gets hidden behind the perceived image - and partly because she is hard to pin down. From her privileged aristocratic childhood, to the abdication and the problems with Diana - this book questions how she faced her challenges and crises, assess her role, how powerful she was, and how she coped. This is a candid, personal portrait of one of Britain's most loved national treasures. Hugo Vickers, an acknowledged expert on the House of Windsor, has spent seventeen years researching this book, and observed the Queen Mother in public and private over a period of forty years.

Elizabeth, The Queen Mother

A portrait of the chic bisexual world of Hollywood, Europe, and New York captures the relationship that existed among Greta Garbo, playwright Mercedes de Acosta, and photographer Cecil Beaton

The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta

Loving Garbo

"The most knowledgeable royal biographer on the planet" -- The Financial Times Hugo Vickers is an acknowledged authority on the British Royal Family. He has commented on royal matters on television and radio since 1973 and worked as historical adviser on a number of films. He is the author of books on the Queen Mother, the Duchess of Windsor, Princess Andrew of Greece (Prince Philip's mother) and Queen Mary all of whom are featured in the popular Netflix show, The Crown. Since November 2016, Peter Morgan has presented millions of viewers with the first 3 seasons of The Crown, positioned as an accurate, dramatized portrayal of the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Now, in The Crown Dissected, Vickers separates fact from fiction in all 3 seasons of the series. Episode-by-episode analysis dissects the plots, characterization and historical detail in each storyline. Vickers tells us what really happened and what certainly did not happen. It's a must-read for fans of the show, and proves that more than a little artistic license has gone into the making of The Crown.

Seasons 1, 2 and 3

The Crown Dissected

Details the life of Great Britain's Princess Alice, who married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903, a union that plunged her into a life of turmoil, fraught with war, exile, and execution, forcing her to be placed into a sanitarium in Switzerland where she was declared a "schizophrenic paranoid," in a fascinating biography that vividly recreates the wealth, royalty, and power of the twentieth century. 17,500 first printing.

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.

Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough

Truth & Fiction

The Crown

Examines the very different backgrounds of the Duke and Duchess and their thirty-five year marriage

The Private World of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

An Analysis of the Netflix Series The Crown

The Crown: Truth & Fiction

Hugo Vickers investigates the character of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in what is likely to be the most personal and authoritative account of her life ever published. This is the first major study of the Queen Mother to be published since her death.

Hugo Vickers

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