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ROYALTY, UNDER POLITE OBSERVATION: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor at 'Villa Windsor'

The Duke and Duchess on the front steps of the 'Villa Windsor' Darlings, come closer… If walls could talk, these would ask for a cigarette and a lawyer. This is Villa Windsor. A house where one King Edward, formerly His Majesty, though one hates to be crude about it, came to evaporate. Once upon a very improper time, a king decided that ruling an empire was far less interesting than chasing an American divorcée who treated him like a particularly needy lapdog. So Edward VIII did the unthinkable. He dropped the crown like yesterday’s lover and followed Wallis Simpson to Paris, where they lived out their exile in silk robes, surrounded by bad art, worse guests, and whispers that never stopped. Tragic, truly. Of course, Europe collectively wondered whether ‘that woman’ had finally gone too far. Because Wallis Simpson did not just love Edward. She had curated him with a precision that only someone as controlled as Wallis could. She adored his devotion because it was total, public, ...
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LA DOLCE VITA: Jean Schweppe Armour 1960

  Mrs. Jean Schweppe Armour, with friends and family, enjoying the pool on the family estate at Lake Forest, Illinois, 1960 Photographed by Slim Aarons 

WHAT TRUMAN’S READING: L.A.’s Legendary Restaurants

While others chase the new, I've taken supper with ghosts, silver trays, whispered scandals, and a martini or two. 'L. A.'s Legendary Restaurants' is less a book and more an invitation to dine with history itself.. and I never decline a proper invitation." Tap here darling, restraint is terribly unfashionable.

CANDID CAMERA: Edward Kennedy 1941

Edward ‘Teddy’ Kennedy, climbing a palm tree on the beach at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach, Florida January 7, 1941 (Photographed by Bert Morgan)

THAT'S WHAT HE SAID: Truman Capote

“Fame is only good for one thing - they will cash your check in a small town” Truman Capote

CANDID CAMERA: Lee Radziwill 1966

Lee Radziwill, adjusting her masque and getting ready for Truman Capote's 'Black and White Ball' at the Plaza Hotel, New York City, 1966

A GOLDEN LIFE SILENCED: The Curious Undoing of Sunny von Bülow

Now, lean in, darling, because I am only going to whisper this once. There are stories that belong in the papers, and there are stories that belong between us. The affair of Sunny von Bülow is very firmly the second kind. It has everything. Money so old it has grown its own atmosphere, a husband with a monocle’s worth of charm and a murderer’s worth of motive, and a woman so gentle, so accommodating, so devastatingly passive, that one almost wonders if the world simply decided to take advantage. Martha Sharp Crawford, or 'Sunny' as she was known due to her pleasant disposition, was born in 1932 in Manassas, Virginia, to the kind of family that does not need to announce itself. Her father, George W. Crawford, was an executive at Columbia Gas and Electric, and when he died, she was just four years old, barely old enough to understand loss but perfectly positioned to inherit it. He left behind a fortune of approximately $75 million. In 1932 dollars. Which is to say an incomprehens...