Rare Books

"The Duchess Who Dared: The Life Of Margaret, Duchess Of Argyll" 1994 CASTLE, Charles (SOLD)

CASTLE, Charles

[166] pp. 

Sidgwick & Jackson London

1994

9 1/2" x 6 1/4"

Front jacket photography by Derry Moore

Fine/ Fine

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There are two lessons to be learned from this breezy biography. The first is not to leave tucked away in a desk a Polaroid of oneself naked but for a strand of pearls cavorting with a “headless” man not one’s husband. The second is not to fire the man hired to ghostwrite one’s memoirs, as Margaret did with this author. After he landed a hefty advance for her, she double-crossed him, removing him from the deal. With the advance he helped her obtain, she wrote her memoir, Forget Not. However, he also forgot not. He used his taped interviews with Margaret as the basis for this book, considerably franker than her own.

“Although Margaret’s second marriage, to the Duke of Argyll, lasted only ten years, her divorce from him was the longest, costliest and most scandalous in British divorce history.”

--Charles Castle

From a childhood of luxury through a series of sensational adulteries to poverty-stricken old age, the Duchess of Argyll's was a life whose most famous event was the notorious Argyll versus Argyll divorce. To many she seemed a monster, her ruthless pursuit of her own interest was combined with sexual voraciousness and an outrageous lifestyle. This is a biography, told in the Duchess's own words via recorded interviews with the author.

Ethel Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll (née Whigham, formerly Sweeny; 1 December 1912 – 25 July 1993) was a British socialite, best remembered for a celebrated divorce case in 1963 from her second husband, the 11th Duke of Argyll, which featured salacious photographs and scandalous stories.