- Why has Wallis been demonised for so long?
- What factors have contributed to a reassessment? Do you think revisionism is justified?
- Why might Wallis have been seen as pro- Nazi?
- To what extent was her Americanism part of the problem? Can you understand why for some in America Wallis has always been a heroine?
- What characteristics of Wallis’s personality are admirable?
- How do you explain the attitude of the Queen Mother towards Wallis and towards Wallis and Edward?
- Was the denial of royal honours for Wallis justified in the circumstances or vindictive?
- Why has Edward V111 been so little criticised?
- Why are duty and pluck no longer revered compared with today’s goals such as ambition and personal fulfilment?
- Has our attitude towards divorce changed for the better?
- What about some of the other characters in my story: Why do you think Winston Churchill behaved as he did? Was Mary an admirable character?
- What role do you think was played by the wives of politicians such as Lucy Baldwin, Nancy Dugdale Helen Hardinge and Hilda Runciman and why do you think their views have not been taken into account before?
- Which of the characters do you feel most sympathy for: Mary, Ernest, Henry/Aharon, Aunt Bessie, Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles?
- Which of the characters do you feel should have done more to understand or guide Edward earlier in his life e.g. his parents, his private secretaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church leaders or his girlfriends?
- Do you agree that Wallis performed a useful service by delivering a new monarch for such critical times?
- How should she be remembered? As a style icon and if so why? Describe her style. Or as a victim and if so why?
- Do you believe every generation has a different attitude to key personalities according to historical context?
Jennie Churchill – Some Areas for a Book Club Discussion
- Was Jennie a bad mother? if so did she become a better mother?
Did she only become interested in WSC when he grew more interesting? Can any parent be truly disinterested in their children’s future? - Can you justify her anti-suffrage stance?
- What did Winston inherit from his Mother and Jerome genes or from his father and Marlborough genes? Did he at any stage exploit his American inheritance merely for political gain?
- Was Winston manipulative as a child?
- Why do you think he wrote about his mother in the way that he did as a distant mother in MY Early LIFE?
- Do you think Winston’s brother Jack got a raw deal because he was not demanding enough?
- Was Jennie extravagant, selfish and privileged or did she do the best she could with the fist History dealt her?
- Ethics of biography… what right does the biographer have to pry into medical records? Does patient confidentiality extend beyond the grave?
- Do you like Jennie more or less than you thought you would before reading this? Is the book fair to Randolph or does the biographer take a position?
- What would you like to know more about? And do you think Jennie developed as a character?
- How important was the historical background for Jennie’s story? eg The American Civil War, the Siege of Paris, the Boer War and World War 1?
- What if…. Jennie had lived fifty years later?
Cat’s Paws at Work again
I finally caught up with the justly praised centenary exhibition devoted to Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes at the Victoria and Albert Museum and drooled over the fabulous costumes remarkably preserved with all their brilliance and sparkle intact. I loved the fascinating commentaries on the music of the ballets by Howard Goodall and restored footage of Karsavina showing what dancing was like before the Ballets Russes when dancers had some flesh on them. And I consumed a host of mini biographies of such key artistic figures of the early twentieth century as Stravinsky, Bakst, Nijinsky, Fokine, Lydia Lopkova and my namesake – the wild and beautiful ballerina, Ida Rubinstein. For 25 years I was a Rubinstein, too, but in those days only knew about Anton and Arthur not Ida.
But I was reminded of one story which was not told here: on June 21 1911 Nijinsky made his debut on the London stage largely thanks to the support patronage and organisation of the beautiful society hostess, Gladys de Grey by then Gladys Ripon. Each performance of the Ballets Russes was a personal triumph for Gladys none more so than the one given four days after the coronation, in front of the new King and Queen, at which she swept up and down the aisle of the Opera House personally greeting as many members of the audience as she could.
This public and dramatic success worked like a knife in and old wound for Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie (by then Mrs Cornwallis West). Jennie could never forget how her late husband, Lord Randolph had admired, wooed and perhaps even bedded Gladys. Jennie decided to pursue an even more ambitious goal of promoting a Shakespeare Memorial and a National Theatre largely out of rivalry with Gladys. Actually Jennie’s was a brilliantly imaginative idea to raise funds for a National Memorial Shakespearean Theatre. She recreated a Shakespearean world at Earl’s Court with buildings designed by Lutyens, Elizabethan taverns and jousting competitions. But her event flopped and yet again Jennie lost money. Soon after she lost her husband too, George Cornwallis West. Jennie died in 1921 after a fall down stairs Diaghilev eight years later in 1929.
Charity Begins at Home
Once a year I host a literary lunch for charity at home in my basement. The charity is chosen by the writer who gives the talk and whose books we give away at the end of the lunch. Every year, as I contemplate how to feed and organise 30 of my women friends, I say never again. This year, as deep snow fell and the trains and planes stopped running and the phone rang with cancellations, I said it with meaning. And then, on the day itself, something magical happened. In the event almost everyone struggled through snow and ice to get to the lunch and almost everyone insisted they had had an inspirational time. I love seeing how much pleasure a book and the idea of how a book came into being and how its creator agonized over its birth can give.
The speaker was the novelist, short story writer and creative writing teacher, Wendy Perriam, who talked bravely and courageously about her life as well as writing. She, a lapsed Catholic, said the reason so many writers are either Jewish or Catholic is because both are such dramatic religions. Her latest novel is called Broken Places and anyone who heard her talk about it on Woman’s Hour earlier this year will know they are in for a dramatic journey with Eric the librarian. After lunch she was asked the unanswerable: how to keep going when your only daughter is dying from tongue cancer, as Wendy’s tragically was. Wendy did not exactly say that writing was therapy. How can there be any therapy to help with such a tragedy? But she certainly poured herself into her work and, as I looked around my basement, I realised how many people in that room had suffered tragedy at some point in their lives and how they had all carried on with life as they needed to live it. Donna Thomson, whose book Four Walls of Freedom about her son, who has cerebral palsy, came out last year was one example.
So now as I am folding away the ancient trestle table and returning the equally ancient chairs to the attic whence they came, I realise that far from not wanting to give another I can hardly wait to pounce on my next author. And we raised
Adding some sparkle to your life
I have just held some of the most exquisite jewels that once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor. My heart was racing. If you are a biographer, you can’t get much closer to your subject – or at least to this particular subject – than handling jewels she once owned and wore, even trying them on for size. (They fitted me rather well, actually) This jewelry blazed forth to the world not just that Wallis was rich but that she had exquisite taste and was in the vanguard of modern design. She may have been stripped of the royal initials HRH that most lawyers believed were her due but no one could stop her wearing a ruby crown above a diamond heart with emerald initials, a gift from her husband. It is now on offer again to the highest bidder, and, judging by the crowd looking at the jewels with me, there are plenty of women hoping their man will prove as devoted a jewel buyer as the Duke of Windsor.
Twenty three years after the historic sale of almost all the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels, 20 pieces from that sale will be re-auctioned on Tuesday 30th November. For the past few months the exquisite objects have been tempting buyers around the world and now they are on display again in London. These highly personal pieces with their intimate inscriptions may never again be seen. There may never again be collectors like the non royal WE – Wallis and Edward.You have just three days left to see them. Hurry.