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.

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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.

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Afterword by John Julius Norwich
TRANSLATED BY Duff Cooper
Cover illustration by Jason Martin
ISBN 1-901285-20-0 • 80pp • £5