This image is the cover for the book Darling Monster

Darling Monster

An English aristocrat’s WWII letters “illuminate British history . . . [and] offer an indelible portrait of an extraordinary woman and her vanished world.”(Kirkus Reviews)

Aristocrat, socialite, actress and wife of Duff Cooper, Churchill's wartime Minister for Information, later Ambassador to France and Viscount Norwich, Diana Cooper was also an inveterate letter-writer. Gathered here, her missives to her only son John Julius Norwich during the Second World War and its aftermath provide a vivid picture of the age and its personalities, and a woman of great intelligence, happiest on her country smallholding but able to cope with the demands on a politician's wife.

"While Darling Monster is a showcase of Diana’s debonair wit, it is also a unique chronicle of wartime Britain. Her vivid descriptions, the sense of bravery in the face of impending doom, make these letters the kind of primary source material historians drool over.” —The Guardian

“Cooper is always quick with a turn of phrase, and the collection reminds us of a time, not so long ago, when letters were a natural part of life.” —Publishers Weekly

Diana Cooper

Lady Diana Cooper was born on August 29, 1892, daughter ostensibly of the son of the 8th Duke of Rutland, in fact of the Hon. Harry Cust. Defying all her mother's efforts to stop her, she became a nurse at Guy's Hospital during the First World War and married Alfred Duff Cooper, DSO, son of a surgeon from Norwich, who became one of the Second World War's key politicians. Her startling beauty resulted in her playing the lead in two silent films and then Max Reinhardt's The Miracle. For the war effort, Diana converted their seaside cottage in Sussex into a small farm. In 1944, following the Liberation of Paris, the couple moved into the British Embassy, Paris. They then retired to a house at Chantilly just outside the city. After Duff's death in 1954, Diana remained there until 1960, when she moved back to London. She died in 1986.

The Overlook Press