The original Delevingne girl

❉ The first biography of  socialite Doris Delevingne, great aunt of Cara, coming soon from The History Press.

The History Press publish Lyndsy Spence’s ‘The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne’ on 7 November 2016. This is the first biography of Doris Delevingne,  lover of Churchill and Beaton amongst many others, and great aunt of supermodels Cara and Poppy.

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Featuring new and original research into her relationship with Winston Churchill, and unpublished correspondence and diaries from a huge range of sources, ‘The Mistress of Mayfair’ is a real life story of scandal, greed, corruption and promiscuity at the heart of 1920s and ’30s high society, centring 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 and Winston Churchill, amongst others) on both sides, and degenerated into one of London’s bitterest, and most talked-about, divorce battles. This story follows the rise and fall of their relationship, exploring their decadent society lives in revelatory detail and offering new insight into the lives of some of the mid twentieth-century’s most prominent figures. A new take on a perennially popular era, ‘The Mistress of Mayfair’ introduces Doris Delevingne as one of the period’s most spectacular and complicated icons, whose tragic fate has until now obscured her vivid spirit. Carefully reconstructing her life and downfall, Lyndsy Spence will reveal all about the woman behind the scandal – and the man who adored her most.


❉ ‘Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne’ by Lyndsy Spence will be published by The History Press on 7 November, RRP £20.00

Lyndsy Spence is the founder of the Margaret Lockwood Society, an online community dedicated to the classic star. She co-wrote ‘The Flower Girl’, a short film directed by Emmy Award winner Nick Nanton and shot on location in Los Angeles. As a freelance writer she has written for BBC News Magazine, The Lady, Vintage Life, and Social & Personal. She is the author of ‘The Mitford Girls’ Guide to Life’, ‘Mrs Guinness: The Rise and Fall of Diana Mitford’, ‘Margaret Lockwood: Queen of the Silver Screen’ and ‘The Mistress of Mayfair’.

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