The life of Lady Diana Cooper: 'the most beautiful girl in the world' - The Australian Financial Review
What can it have been like to have been Lady Diana Cooper, "the most beautiful girl in the world", "the only really glamorous woman in the world", the most celebrated debutante of her era, the daughter of a duke, the wife of a famous diplomat... It's a question we can answer, given the vast literature about her, beginning with her enchanting three volumes of memoirs, and including biographies of both her and her husband, Duff Cooper. an ample collection of their mostly rapturous letters to each other. It's called Darling Monster , although there's nothing monstrous about her beloved John Julius, and there's nothing monstrous in her passionate but practical attachment to him. The apparent stability of their relationship suggests that she was as good a mother as she was a society figure, nurse, actress, wife, writer, hostess, ambassadress, farmer and perhaps most of all, friend. Lady Diana Manners (her name until she married Duff), born in 1892, was the last child of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, or at least she was the duchess's last child: it was commonly assumed that her biological father was the brilliant, charming... Source: www.afr.com
