The Riviera Set

In those days before television and movies, the theatre was the only available public entertainment. Popular actors had the status of A-List celebrities and those at the top such as Henry Irving and Sarah Bernhardt, were as iconic to late Victorians as Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe would be in the following century. Maxine was yet to reach the top of this greasy pole, with the celebrity status that meant she had arrived, but she was on her way. The Riviera Set is the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped and politicked at the Chateau de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of forty years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960. At the heart of this was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Chateau and brought together the likes of Noel Coward, the Aga Khan, the Windsors and two very saucy courtesans, Doris Castlerosse and Daisy Fellowes, who set out to be dangerous distractions to Winston Churchill as he worked on his journalism and biographies during his 'wilderness years' in the thirties. After the War the story continued as the Chateau changed hands and Prince Aly Khan used it to entertain the Hollywood set, as well as launch his seduction of and eventual marriage to Rita Hayworth. Mary Lovell tells her story of high society behaviour with tremendous brio and relish, and this book has all the charm and fascination of her bestselling The Mitford Girls and The Churchills. Mary S. Lovell is a celebrated biographer whose works include an acclaimed account of the lives of The Mitford Girls as well as biographies of Bess of Hardwick, The Churchills and Amelia Earhart.