Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Last of the Duchess | 2012 | Caroline Blackwood | Buy |
The Last of the Duchess is Caroline Blackwood’s only standalone non-fiction book, published in 2012, sixteen years after her death. Blackwood began the project in the early 1990s when she traveled to Paris to write about the Duchess of Windsor, by then elderly and hidden from public view by her formidable lawyer Maitre Suzanne Blum.
The book is part journalism, part character study, and part Gothic comedy. Blackwood never gained access to the Duchess, and the resulting work focuses as much on Blum’s controlling behavior as on its nominal subject. The manuscript was incomplete when Blackwood died in 1996, and it was edited and published by her literary estate. It has been praised for its wit and unsettling atmosphere.