HUGO VICKERS Biographer & Historian
'The 65 visits Hugo Vickers paid Gladys before she died gave her a final friendship and him the makings of this sensitive, highly intelligent biography'

– Eve Auchincloss - Time
9 June 1980



'A remarkable book, in which a huge cast of characters is handled with elegance and sympathy'

– Violet Powell - Daily Telegraph
6 September 1979



'She was lucky indeed to have Hugo Vickers, his eager interest, his talent for drawing her out. If the last fifteen years of an immensely long life are to be spent in a mad-house then let us pray for a Hugo Vickers.'

– Diana Mosley - books & bookmen
November 1979



'Mr Vickers's first biography is a sensitive and absorbing account of a fascinating woman, which leaves one wondering about the effects of illusion, when dreams fade to darkness'

– Mary Mulholland - Country Life
1 October 1979



This life 'is informed by his shrewd appreciation of her wayward personality as well as a thorough command of her private papers'

- Piers Brendon - The Observer - 9 September 1979



'Years later, when she had become an old lady, chance brought her the only two faithful friends of her long life. One was a Polish refugee who kept an eye on her … and the other was the author of this remarkable book'

– Gordon Rhodes - The Yorkshire Post
6 September 1979



'Mr Vickers has done an impressive amount of work and writes with an enjoyable relish'

– Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd - The Spectator
22 September 1979



'Hugo Vickers sought her out and befriended her … he tells her story - one so astonishing as to be totally incredible if presented as fiction'

– Martin Fagg - Church Times
14 December 1979



'Read this book and you will understand his compulsion'

– Jane Heyhoe - East Anglian Times
16 February 1980



'His book is frighteningly good, a glimpse at the carrion beneath le gratin'

– Dermot McEvoy - Hibernia
27 September 1979



'It is a kindly biography that neither hides the blemishes nor ignores the triumphs'

– Frank Goodman - Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph
6 October 1979



'Thirteen years and hundreds of miles of travelling later he has written an impressive and fascinating life of this American beauty'

– Teresa Metcalf - The Birmingham Post
4 September 1979



'What Mr Vickers has produced is an absorbing fable'

– The New Yorker
8 September 1980



'Hugo Vickers, author of this biography, isn't too concerned with the lessons to be learned from a mis-spent life, however: he merely wants to tell the story, as faithfully as he can, of a woman who has fascinated him since he first heard of her existence when he was 16 … And tell it he does, in most compelling fashion'

– William French - The Globe and Mail, Canada
26 January 1980



'Throughout this moving account of Gladys Deacon's life, Vickers is sympathetic but scrupulously honest … Vickers's remarkable biography is at once a celebration of a fascinating personality and an elegiac lamentation for her tragic disintegration'

– Maureen Potts - El Paso Herald-Post
1980



'It is a haunting tale with several morals to be drawn from it' - AW (? Auberon Waugh)

– Literary Review
September 1987

Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough (1979)
Hardback (UK) 1979
Hardback (US) 1980
Paperback (UK) 1987