The Sphinx

Trade Paperback

The Life of Gladys Deacon Duchess of Marlborough

<h2>**The Times and Sunday Times Books of the Year 2020**</h2>

<h2>**The Times Best Biography Audiobook of the Year 2021**</h2>

<h3>'Vickers gives breathing, alarming life to a woman who puzzled and thrilled her contemporaries'

SUNDAY TIMES 'Best Paperbacks of 2021'</h3>

'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

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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,