"... the most cherishable is the least familiar - Madame de by Louise de Vilmorin. De Vilmorin was a noted beauty whose lovers included Antoine de Exupery and Orson Welles; her glittering fable of passion and deception centres on a pair of diamond earrings. To make it even more of a gem, Madame de has an afterword by John Julius Norwich, whose father Duff Cooper was its translator. Cooper was one of Vilmorin's lovers while serving as British Ambassador to Paris... So this tiny volume (price £5) offers not just a story, but the story behind the story)."
The Guardian
ABOUT THE BOOK
THIS IS THE STORY of Madame de's earrings. It is a story of jewellery, of love, of denial, of society that has the simplicity of a fairy tale and the elegance of an eighteenth century roman-a-clef. This novella became The Earrings of Madame de, a 1952 Max Ophuls film.
THIS IS THE STORY of Madame de's earrings. It is a story of jewellery, of love, of denial, of society that has the simplicity of a fairy tale and the elegance of an eighteenth century roman-a-clef. This novella became The Earrings of Madame de, a 1952 Max Ophuls film.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LOUISE DE VILMORIN was a novelist and poet and the most extraordinary of women. Married to a Hungarian count, her lovers included Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Orson Welles and Andre Malraux. But it was Duff Cooper, British Ambassador to France, during the 1940s, who was the love of her life, and the translator of this novella. John Julius Norwich, his son, describes in his moving Afterword the menage a-trois that he remembers as a child at the British Embassy in Paris.
Afterword by JOHN JULIUS NORWICH
Translated by DUFF COOPER
Cover illustration by JASON MARTIN
ISBN 978 1 901285 20 8 - 80pp
