Anne de Courcy
Author of The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj
About the Author
Anne de Courcy is an English biographer and journalist. Her title's include: Kithcens, Making Room at the Top, Snowdon: The Biography, The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj, and The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Daily Mail
Works by Anne de Courcy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- de Courcy, Anne
- Birthdate
- 1927
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Barnsley, Gloucestershire, UK - Occupations
- writer
journalist
author - Relationships
- Hurst, Christopher (companion)
- Organizations
- London Evening News (Women's Editor)
Evening Standard (feature writer)
Daily Mail
Biographers' Club - Short biography
- Anne de Courcy is a well-known writer and journalist. In the 1970s she was the women's editor on the London Evening News and in the 1980s she was a regular feature writer for the Evening Standard. In 1992 she joined the Daily Mail, where she has written interviews, historical features and book reviews as well as edited a page on readers' dilemmas. She has written eight books including The English in Love, 1939: The Last Season, Circe: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry and a biography of Diana Mosley that will appear after the subject's lifetime. She lives in London.
Members
Reviews
Chanel's Riviera: Glamour, Decadence, and… by Anne de Courcy
Coco Chanel, in all her complexities, occupies an iconic space in twentieth-century history. This book, which focuses not just on Chanel but also her wider social circle, spans the 1930s and 1944s, as the turbulence those years becomes open war. Chanel's circle was uniquely placed in their experiences of World War II, as the group included both Nazi officers and British politicians like Winston Churchill. An interesting read, although one that must be read with the understanding that this was not the typical experience of war.… (more)
Excellent and very readable biography about a fascinating but flawed woman. Done with a scholarly approach - this is not a 'tabloiud' biography - and the author is scrupulously neutral rather than being judgemental, although nothing bad is held back.
The Publisher Says: Anne de Courcy, the author of Husband Hunters and Chanel's Riviera, examines the controversial life of legendary beauty, writer and rich girl Nancy Cunard during her thirteen years in Jazz-Age Paris.
Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship.
Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous, as was her romance with black jazz pianist Henry Crowder. Her friendship with the famous Irish novelist George Moore, her mother’s lover and a man falsely rumored to be Nancy’s father, was the longest-lasting of her life. Cunard’s early years were ones of great wealth but also emotional deprivation. Her mother Lady Cunard, the American heiress Maud Alice Burke (who later changed her name to Emerald) became a reigning London hostess; Nancy, from an early age, was given to promiscuity and heavy drinking and preferred a life in the arts to one in the social sphere into which she had been born. Highly intelligent, a gifted poet and widely read, she founded a small press that published Samuel Beckett among others. A muse to many, she was also a courageous crusader against racism and fascism. She left Paris in 1933, at the end of its most glittering years and remained unafraid to live life on the edge until her death in 1965.
Magnificent Rebel is a nuanced portrait of a complex woman, set against the backdrop of the City of Light during one of its most important and fascinating decades.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: How the hell do I rate and review this book? Author de Courcy writes very well, has clearly done research I have no reason to suspect contains careless errors (ie, I as a non-expert possess no knowledge that contradicts anything contained in here), and clearly understands the role of conflict and drama in non-fiction...yet I hated every minute of the read.
Let me explain.
Nancy Cunard knew everyone, went everywhere, did everything adventurous and fun one can dream up to do when there is a giant pot of cash under one's checkbook. She was also a narcissist, and probably a sociopath. She had no moral compass I could discern from any anecdote herein. She was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," because she could and did turn on people who had given her no cause to dislike them.
And men flocked to her orbit! They wanted sex, of course, but quite a lot of them fell for her! All the mor amazing because of her one reasonably good quality, by modern standards: she never bothered herself to dissemble. As the great majority of people prefer to be told pretty little lies by their lovers, I'd say this shows that the men who fell for her really, truly fell, to accept her honest and usually very scathing opinion of them and keep coming back. Her "honesty" (which, as presented herein, is really just brutal unnecessary unkindness) comes in for a helping of praise I don't feel is warranted. She did many laudable things in pursuit of social justice, which no one should try to minimize. Her addiction issues and mental illness, which the author is careful to make unmistakable for the reader, is obvious in hindsight from the present century's ludicrously low "heights" of enlightenment, do not excuse the abusive and manipulative behaviors she displayed. To Author de Courcy's credit, she makes no excuses for the troubling behviors but goes out of her way to explain how the Cunards were less a family than threesome of selfish, oblivious rich people. How else could Nancy have turned out?
So I liked the book. But I loathed the subject. I am not glad I know more about her than my previous awareness of her name and sterling literary taste and activities. I feel...soiled...by the knowledge that this awful person is a feminist icon to some because she was as free as the male abusers and rotters of her day. Yuck! "But they were worse!" hardly seems like a justification for someone to behave badly.
I've settled on four stars, all for the felicity of Author de Courcy's discourse, and none for this awful, abusive human being.… (more)
Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship.
Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous, as was her romance with black jazz pianist Henry Crowder. Her friendship with the famous Irish novelist George Moore, her mother’s lover and a man falsely rumored to be Nancy’s father, was the longest-lasting of her life. Cunard’s early years were ones of great wealth but also emotional deprivation. Her mother Lady Cunard, the American heiress Maud Alice Burke (who later changed her name to Emerald) became a reigning London hostess; Nancy, from an early age, was given to promiscuity and heavy drinking and preferred a life in the arts to one in the social sphere into which she had been born. Highly intelligent, a gifted poet and widely read, she founded a small press that published Samuel Beckett among others. A muse to many, she was also a courageous crusader against racism and fascism. She left Paris in 1933, at the end of its most glittering years and remained unafraid to live life on the edge until her death in 1965.
Magnificent Rebel is a nuanced portrait of a complex woman, set against the backdrop of the City of Light during one of its most important and fascinating decades.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: How the hell do I rate and review this book? Author de Courcy writes very well, has clearly done research I have no reason to suspect contains careless errors (ie, I as a non-expert possess no knowledge that contradicts anything contained in here), and clearly understands the role of conflict and drama in non-fiction...yet I hated every minute of the read.
Let me explain.
Nancy Cunard knew everyone, went everywhere, did everything adventurous and fun one can dream up to do when there is a giant pot of cash under one's checkbook. She was also a narcissist, and probably a sociopath. She had no moral compass I could discern from any anecdote herein. She was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," because she could and did turn on people who had given her no cause to dislike them.
And men flocked to her orbit! They wanted sex, of course, but quite a lot of them fell for her! All the mor amazing because of her one reasonably good quality, by modern standards: she never bothered herself to dissemble. As the great majority of people prefer to be told pretty little lies by their lovers, I'd say this shows that the men who fell for her really, truly fell, to accept her honest and usually very scathing opinion of them and keep coming back. Her "honesty" (which, as presented herein, is really just brutal unnecessary unkindness) comes in for a helping of praise I don't feel is warranted. She did many laudable things in pursuit of social justice, which no one should try to minimize. Her addiction issues and mental illness, which the author is careful to make unmistakable for the reader, is obvious in hindsight from the present century's ludicrously low "heights" of enlightenment, do not excuse the abusive and manipulative behaviors she displayed. To Author de Courcy's credit, she makes no excuses for the troubling behviors but goes out of her way to explain how the Cunards were less a family than threesome of selfish, oblivious rich people. How else could Nancy have turned out?
So I liked the book. But I loathed the subject. I am not glad I know more about her than my previous awareness of her name and sterling literary taste and activities. I feel...soiled...by the knowledge that this awful person is a feminist icon to some because she was as free as the male abusers and rotters of her day. Yuck! "But they were worse!" hardly seems like a justification for someone to behave badly.
I've settled on four stars, all for the felicity of Author de Courcy's discourse, and none for this awful, abusive human being.… (more)
Is there a fiction book about this? If so I would like to read it :)
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Statistics
- Works
- 14
- Members
- 1,654
- Popularity
- #15,536
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 54
- ISBNs
- 90
- Languages
- 4