Anne de courcy biography sample

Hobbies and other interests: Reading, writing, gardening and swimming.

Anne de Courcy has written eleven books, including Diana Mosley, Debs at War, and The Viceroy's Daughters.

She has written several works on the lives of British women in the first half of the twentieth century. De Courcy shows how high-society England lived and changed in the years before the war. However, reviewer Isabel Colegate in the Times Literary Supplement felt that de Courcy exaggerates the change in high society, and that the upper class functioned much the same in as it did in But a Books reviewer was more in support of de Courcy's argument.

The elite's tradition of attending Ascot, Henley, and other glitzy events during the six months beginning in March was part of what got swept away as World War II crept closer; class barriers slipped away and high life fell under the shadow of war.

Anne de Courcy is a well-known writer, journalist and book reviewer.

The reviewer also mentioned that de Courcy's book does more than take the reader on a tour of ballrooms; it provides an overview of British life, including the divorce rate, the number of cars on the road, and the cost of a ticket to Paris. This biography follows the story of the wife of the Seventh Marquess of Londonderry Married to a wild philanderer, she was a loyal wife, a political hostess, and an avid horseback hunter.

A London Observer reviewer called the book "a shrewdly-judged but affectionate and touching portrait of the last great political hostess. Her book, The Viceroy's Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters, is also biographical, but the book isn't a true biography, because it centers not on the entire lives of the three sisters—Irene, Cimmie and Baba—but only on their lives during the s and s, when they were young and badly behaved.

The Viceroy's Daughters is a "chronicle of gossip, scandal, sisterly bickering, political nastiness and the smart social gatherings that Anne de Courcy finds so extraordinarily exciting," noted David Gilmour in his Spectator review. He went on to explain that de Courcy details the sisters' social lives, including wedding presents, dress parties and menus but not, he noted, much that really mattered.

The story begins with Lord Curzon, the British Viceroy of India from to , whose wife dies in , leaving him with his three daughters. They grew into women who were stubborn like their father. Lord Curzon died in and then, after a hard life with an abusive husband, Cimmie died in The book then becomes a chronicle of the love affairs of Irene and Baba, noted Isabel Colegate in her Times Literary Supplement review.