Nancy Cunard:Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist: Lois Gordon: Columbia Press

Yes I confess, TI is a bit of a Nancy Cunard cultist. As much as she would probably have hated the idea, Madame Cunard keeps bobbing up as a reference point in the fashion trade . As recently as two years ago, Ralph Lauren of all people used her as a touchstone in his FW 05 campaign and both Vogue Italia and L'Uomo Vogue have been known to invoke her as an icon. I love her literary biography "These Were The Hours" about her years as a publisher and today I'm locked in the house with Lois Gordon's masterful new biography on NC. Fluid, detailed and a little worshipful (even I have to admit Nancy poetry was NOT the kismet), Gordon's overview of Cunard's life is a must buy nonetheless. Its chockfull of brilliant tid bits (like King George changing the family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to "Windsor" during the anti-Hun frenzy of WW1) as well as great stories of Nancy's laison with the original Imagist, Ezra Pound, as well as modernist literary icons like T.S Eliot and Wyndham Lewis. The summary at the American Library Review says it all "Scandalous, gifted, and, in her own tormented way, heroic, Cunard blazed brightly at the epicenter of a brutal yet creative epoch." I love this woman. If she had had a great-grandaughter I'd have hunted her down with a marriage proposal. It would have kept the family tradition going no?