Paperback: Empress Bianca (2008) is a window into the lives of the wealthiest people in the world. It chronicles the rise of a young middle-class girl, for whom nothing is quite ever enough, into one of the leaders of international society.
To her father, Bianca was a princess. To her first husband, she was the perfect wife and mother. But to the other men in her life she was so much more. Daughter of a Welsh Surveyor who had brought his Palestinian wife to Mexico at the end of World War II to seek his fortune, Bianca was raised always to expect the best of everything. She quickly discovered, however, that the best was never going to be enough.
Charming, attractive, vivacious and extremely aware of her power over rich and powerful men, she sought nothing less than to be the absolute ruler of international society. Reluctantly but ruthlessly contriving to bring about the end of her marriage to Bernardo, she quickly allowed herself to become wedded to the fortunes of Ferdie, the psychologically unstable scion of the powerful and rich Piedraplata family, whose international concerns include commerce, banking and jewelry.
However, when deep cracks start to form in their glamourous jet-set lifestyle together, Bianca turns to the calculating and amoral Philippe Mahfud, an Iraqi business associate of Ferdies, to help her attain the wealth and status she secretly covets.
Follow Empress Bianca from her earliest days as a middle-class housewife in post-war Mexico as she lies, cheats, schemes and seduces her way to the top. A veritable monster of vanity and pretension, captured with deadly accuracy in Lady Colins lucid prose, Bianca leaves her mark on every couturier's salon, chic restaurant or exclusive gathering she walks into, cutting an unmistakable swathe through social circles and gossip columns from the late 1950s right up to today.
Lady Colin Campbell's compulsive debut novel is a tale of charm, intrigue and cold-blooded murder set among the high flyers of twentieth-century international society.
About the author: Lady Colin Campbell is a highly successful and prolific author and has been a prominent and often controversial figure in royal and social circles for many years. She perhaps is best known for her international bestselling book Diana in Private, 1992, and her subsequent extended and revelatory biography of the Princess of Wales, The Real Diana, published in 2004. She has written books on the Royal Family, been a long term columnist and appeared numerous times on TV and Radio as an experienced Royal Insider and expert on the British aristocracy. In 1997 she published her autobiography, A Life Worth Living, which was serialised in The Daily Mail.
Born in Jamaica, she spent much of her early adult life in America where she became a model and studied apparel design. She is connected to British royalty through common ancestors such as the Emperor Charlemagne and William the Conqueror as well as, through her marriage, to the uncle of the Duke of Argyll, who is a cousin of the Queen. She has two sons and lives in London.
Rating: 5/5
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