**Picked as One of the Best Books So Far in 2020 by the Sunday Times** 'A continuously
astonishing and ultimately moving account of a unique figure the stuff of great literature'
Simon Callow THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Gripping . . . jaw-dropping story brilliantly told' Ysenda
Maxtone Graham THE TIMES 'The last book that made me cry . . . a really thorough and
well-researched biography' Lynda La Plante Good Housekeeping 'The most extraordinary rackety
life' William Boyd DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Richly anecdotal and oddly captivating' Miranda Seymour
FINANCIAL TIMES 'At the end of the book the reader can only say Whew! What a story!' Anne de
Courcy SPECTATOR 'Hugo Vickers's life of Gladys Marlborough is an extraordinary and tragic
story with special resonance today' EVENING STANDARD ******************* One of the most
beautiful and brilliant women of her time Gladys Deacon dazzled and puzzled the glittering
social circles in which she moved. Born in Paris to American parents in 1881 Gladys emerged
from a traumatic childhood - her father having shot her mother's lover dead when Gladys was
only eleven - to captivate and inspire some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the
Belle Epoque. Marcel Proust wrote of her 'I never saw a girl with such beauty such
magnificent intelligence such goodness and charm.' Berenson considered marrying her Rodin and
Monet befriended her Boldini painted her and Epstein sculpted her. She inspired love from
diverse Dukes and Princes and the interest of women such as the Comtesse Greffulhe and
Gertrude Stein. In 1921 when Gladys was forty she achieved the wish she had held since the
age of fourteen to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough then freshly divorced from fellow
American Consuelo Vanderbilt. Gladys's circle now included Lady Ottoline Morrell Lytton
Strachey and Winston Churchill who described her as 'a strange glittering being'. But life at
Blenheim was not a success: when the Duke evicted her in 1933 the only remaining signs of
Gladys were two sphinxes bearing her features on the west terraces and mysterious blue eyes in
the grand portico. She became a recluse and the wax injections she'd had to straighten her
nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. Gladys was to spend her last years in the
psycho-geriatric ward of a mental hospital where she was discovered by a young Hugo Vickers.
Intrigued and compelled to unmask the truth of her mysterious life Vickers visited her over
the course of two years eventually publishing Gladys Duchess of Marlborough a biography of
her life - and his first book - in 1979 two years after Gladys's death. Forty years on
Vickers has now completely rewritten and revised his original biography updating it with
previously unavailable material and drawing on his own personal research all over Europe and
America. He once asked Gladys 'Where is Gladys Deacon?' She answered him slowly 'Gladys
Deacon? . . . She never existed.' The Sphinx is a fascinating portrait of this elusive but
brilliant woman who was at the centre of a now bygone era of wealth and privilege - and a
tribute to one of the brightest stars of her age.
