Creditable, Surprising, Abundantly and Elegantly Good: Michael Hofmann on Duff Cooper's Only Novel

Duff Cooper (1890–1953): soldier, diplomat, parliamentarian, cabinet minister, man of letters. Also gambler, lover, and bon viveur. He came from a family flecked with elopements and illegitimacies, though also (“a dash of Hanoverian blood”) with ancestral ties to the British royal family . . . Duff Cooper was a product of Eton and New College, Oxford; a war hero, in what appears to have been a somewhat chaotic solitary action in the so-called “Battle of the Mist” on the Albert Canal, for which he received a DSO; and a celebrity husband as the successful wooer of a famous British beauty, Lady Diana Cooper, all by 1920.