The Mistress of Mayfair

The plot could have been inspired by Evelyn Waughs Vile Bodies, but unlike Waughs novel which parodies the era of the Bright Young Things The Mistress of Mayfair is a real-life story of scandal, greed, corruption and promiscuity at the heart of 1920s and 30s high society, focusing on the wily, wilful socialite Doris Delevingne and her doomed relationship with the gossip columnist Valentine Browne, Viscount Castlerosse. Marrying each other in pursuit of the finer things in life, their unlikely union was tempestuous from the off, rocked by affairs (with a whole host of society figures, including Cecil Beaton, Diana Mitford and Winston Churchill, to name but a few) on both sides, and eventually degenerated into one of Londons bitterest, and most talked about, divorce battles. In The Mistress of Mayfair, Lyndsy Spence follows the rise and fall of their relationship, exploring their decadent society lives in revelatory detail and offering new insight into some of the mid-twentieth centurys most prominent figures.