Showing results by author "Anne Sebba" in Biographies & Memoirs

One of Britain's most distinguished biographers turns her focus on one of the most vilified woman of the last century. Historian Anne Sebba has written the first full biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, by a woman which attempts to understand this fascinating and enigmatic American divorcee who nearly became Queen of England. 'That woman', as she was referred to by the Queen Mother, became a hate figure for allegedly ensnaring a British king.

After a three-day romance, Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy to become Lady Randolph Churchill. At a time when women had few freedoms, she was a cornerstone of high society and behind-the-scenes political dynamo. However it was Jennie's love life that marked her out, causing scandal and earning her the epithet 'more panther than woman'.

Ethel Rosenberg's story is America's Dreyfus Affair: a catastrophic failure of humanity, and probably also of justice, that continues to haunt the national conscience and is still being played out with different actors in the lead roles today. On 19th June 1953, Rosenberg became the first woman to be executed by the US government in almost a century, and the only woman in the US to be executed for a crime other than murder. She was 37 years old and the mother of two small children.