Deborah grew up in Oxfordshire, England, the youngest of seven siblings. Her father loved agriculture and animals, and Debo, as she is known to her friends, inherited that love and spent her childhood roaming her family’s lands with him. When she was older, the family moved to London, where she met Andrew Cavendish, the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.

Andrew’s brother’s untimely death during World War II made him his father’s heir, and when the Duke died, Andrew and Debo gained vast tracts of land in England and Ireland, including the magnificent family seat, Chatsworth.

But it is not Debo’s wealth and position that brings her story to life. Instead, it is the friends and family whose stories she shares. From the antics of her five older sisters—including an elopement to Spain and a prison sentence—to tales of funny friends, like the writer Evelyn Waugh, Debo brings people to life and invites readers to become a part of her captivating world.

My personal favorite recollections are of her times with the Kennedys. Andrew’s brother was married to Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy before his death, and the Devonshires remained close to the family, even being personally invited to sit with the family during Jack Kennedy’s inauguration. Debo also had connections to the greats (and terrible) of Europe: She played host to Prince Philip at her family estate and called Prime Minister Macmillan “Uncle Harold” – and she even had tea with Hitler before the outbreak of World War II!

Duchess Deborah led an amazing life, traveling the world and meeting incredible people. She also inherited the writing bug that bit two of her sisters, Jessica and Nancy, and her witty and insightful comments bring her characters alive and draw people into her world.

This book is for Anglophiles, but it’s also for anyone who loves a well-told story or longs to spice up their usual fiction with a terrific memoir.

Wait for Me! is available now from Picador at a list price of $18.

Book Review: Wait for Me! The Saturday Evening Post

Meanwhile, the Queen, throughout her 57 year reign, has been steadily giving up privileges other monarchs took for granted. Her royal household — including her family, her staff, and the upkeep on several houses — is $60 Million each year.  While this is a princely sum, it has been frozen for 20 years and its purchasing power has dropped by 75%. Moreover, the Queen now pays income tax, which further reduces that figure.

It’s a precarious position, this Queen business. Without any true power of her own, her income is subject to the approval of Parliament, which can deny any expense it doesn’t like.  Meanwhile, there is significant number of Britons who call for the end to a monarchy that seems expensive and silly to them.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth must regularly appear among her subjects and work her royal charm to build support and allegience to herself. As British journalist Malcom Muggeridge observed in the Post back in 1957:

When, as in the case of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch only reigns, with no ruling powers whatsoever, it is inevitable that the focus of interest should be transferred from the office to the person.

It is the Queen herself, her family, her associates, her way of life, which hold the public attention. The role she has inherited is purely symbolic, and the functions that go with it are purely ceremonial. Because she has no power, she must be, in herself, wondrous. If she were ordinary, she would be nothing.

She must be alluring, removed from the necessities and inadequacies of ordinary men and women—a creature of this world in the sense that she has a home, a husband and children, and yet not quite of this world in that she is a queen.

Fortunately, Muggeridge concedes, the Queen does a fairly good job of projecting this royal mystique, despite the disenchanted mood of post-war Britain.

The monarchy has grown more glamorous in circumstances which, theoretically, should have reduced it to the proportions of a Scandinavian dynasty.

Debutantes throng more numerously and eagerly than ever to be presented at court. Mayors and other local dignitaries proudly rustle up gray top hats for the Buckingham Palace garden parties. Labor ministers lay aside their red ties and delightedly attire themselves in knee breeches to attend upon Her Majesty.

This is the Queen’s greatest, and most historic service to the country: dispensing royal approval and honors. Each year, hundreds of British citizens are nominated for knighthood, or an order of chivalry like Commander of the British Empire. The Queen, advised by the Prime Minister’s cabinet, grants these awards to a handful of distinguished, and proud, men and women. The title lack the privileges they once conveyed, but they’re still highly valued. Few Britons turn down them down.

Strangely enough, people are still clamorous for these baubles, which constitute an inexpensive form of political patronage. Happy the government that can bribe with knighthoods, baronetcies and peerages rather than with jobs and money. It is so much cheaper and less complicated.

The Queen would seem to be essential to this procedure. If the honors were conferred by a president or a prime minister, the odds are that they would lose some of their allure. The worthy alderman kneels ecstatically with creaking joints before the Queen to receive the accolade; the aged party hack finds one more canter in him when it is a question of being elevated to the peerage by Her Majesty in person.

Answering the question posed by his article, “Does England Really Need A Queen?” Muggeridge concludes:

Elizabeth II as colonel-in-chief of the Royal Horse Guards at the Trooping of the Colour.

The British monarchy does fulfill a purpose. It provides a symbolic head of state transcending the politicians who go in and out of office, who, as King Lear so wonderfully said, “ebb and flow by the moon.”

It expresses that continuity which has enabled Britain to survive two great revolutions—the French and the Russian—and two ruinous and destructive world wars, without being torn by civil conflict. But this function must not only be fulfilled. It must be seen to be fulfilled.

The Queen, in other words, must be put across, not only as a charming wife and mother who dresses pleasingly, if not always elegantly, who wins hearts wherever she goes, and who presides gracefully over a lunch or dinner table even when her guests include politicians, writers and statesmen, rather than her own intimates, sharing her own simple, unintellectual tastes.

She must be put across, as well, a useful unifying element in a society full of actual and potential discord.

What The Queen Does For A Living The Saturday Evening Post

Perhaps it’s inevitable that any mention of the ‘royals’ in America prompts the old debate of whether there’s any justification for a monarchy today. The duties of the Queen, and all her family members, are entirely ceremonial. They are living symbols of a long tradition. But they are symbols and this is an literal age.

Americans should have a natural prejudice against kings and queens, or any inherited privilege. The United States only came into existence after fighting for independence from King George III — Queen Elizabeth’s great, great, great, great grandfather. Thomas Jefferson branded that king an “absolute tyrant” and believed that aristocracy was a “mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should ever be made to prevent its ascendancy.” In the following centuries, as the U.S. and England competed for global prominence, American writers, teachers, and politicians frequently denounced the English throne, and its occupants — “those pets of privilege,” as Mark Twain called them.

Yet the American attitude toward the Royals is curiously ambivalent. Millions of Americans became admirers of Princess Diana. For some, she embodied the fairytale romance of the princess bride. But many others admired what they perceived as her grace, poise, and commitment to social causes. Americans may be biased against aristocracy, but we are drawn to any display of heroism and virtue. We seek role models of courage, judgment, maturity, and dedication. Like it or not, we have often found these democratic qualities among the last people we would expect — the ultra-privileged.

The Post published several articles about the British royal family in the 20^th Century. Every one of them noted approvingly how England’s Kings and Queens displayed such American virtues as modesty, simplicity, and informality. The authors of “King George” in 1933 praised the frugality of the future George V and his queen, Mary.

[they] ungrudgingly fulfilled the countless ceremonial duties falling to their share… They were content to live self-effacingly with the shadows for a while. Their expenditures were modest, considering their rank. The small dress bills [of Mary] would have amazed women of the New York Four Hundred, it was said at the time. Indeed, even when she became Princess of Wales, the future Queen Mary still most creditably refused to be extravagant.

King George V, they concluded, didn’t even talk like a king.

[His] an unstilted style of saying things, far removed from the old-time public utterances of royalty.

His son, the Prince of Wales — and later, briefly, King Edward VIII — was a nice guy with class:

charming, urbane, with a delightful suavity of manner, [he] puts everybody at ease, allaying all feelings of natural shyness and timidity.

His brother, the future King George VI, had a natural affinity for the commoner:

with the bluffness of the sailor… he had about him a certain “hale-fellow-well-met” air. The straight-from-the-shoulder simplicity with which he talked… rang delightfully true. Pretense was so alien to him… one could see that here was a prince who, in mixing with people, could not easily conceal his liking for them.

If the Post writers purred in their assessment of the kings, they nearly swooned over the young Queen Elizabeth II. Even before she had a chance to prove herself as monarch, journalists were pulling out their most rhapsodic prose for her. Paul Gallico promptly declared her “a young, gracious and really lovely Queen.” Jan Morris gushed —

There is no getting away from the mystique of the English monarchy… I defy any man of sensibility, still less any woman, to resist the magic of this extraordinary lineage, when you meet it face to face. It is a phenomenon unique in its kind. Profound your instincts of equality may be, and blaring your dislike of snobbery, but when it comes to the royal point you will almost certainly succumb. An inescapable mystic allure invests the queen of England when you see her standing in her own palace, a handsome woman in herself, and in her significance marvelously alluring.

One of the classic European experiences of our time is to wander on to Pall Mall in London one high summer day and glimpse above the shoulders of the crowd this royal lady, in a tricorn hat and scarlet tunic, pink-cheeked and grave-faced, side-saddle on a tall chestnut, leading her glittering Horse Guards toward Admiralty Arch. Here we see a last figure of towering romance, of folk loyalties and earth instincts, a last shining reminder of the world that was, before reality broke in.

Reality, in fact, never broke in. It was there all along. All that display and ceremony, the fancy dress and glittering guards, were only incidentally meant to impress commoners and, later, attract tourists.  The monarch’s true purpose, as Malcolm Muggeridge pointed out in his 1957 Post article “Does England Really Need A Queen,” has been, and continues to be, political… [continued]

Next: The Queen’s Real Job

Finding Some Good In The Royals The Saturday Evening Post

I’ve always been curious about how Americans really feel about royalty, and, like Alice in Wonderland, I got “curiouser and curiouser” when King Saud of Saudi Arabia came to the United States recently and got a classic concrete-and-steel cold shoulder from New York’s sky line and New York’s mayor. Was New York speaking for America?

I was in a convertible, coasting along Hollywood Boulevard. Beside me in the driver’s seat was Frank Hanrahan, an old Georgetown chum and an ex-FBI agent. Frank looks stern. Frank looks distinguished. Frank has never been known to play a practical joke since coming to Los Angeles. This is important, as you’ll soon see.

Bright-eyed and unaware, we were on our way to an afternoon gathering of Frank’s friends in the Hollywood hills, when “Great screaming Teddy bears!” (or something like that) exclaimed Frank. “With those sunglasses on, you look just like an Arab sheik!” This was not surprising, as both my parents are Lebanese, but right then I knew my moment had come.

“Do I look like an Arab prince, maybe?” I prodded Frank.

“Whaddya mean? Whaddya mean?”

“Do you think I could pass for an Arab prince with your friends?”

Frank gently braked the bathtub and pulled up to the curb. He squinted at me in the glaring California sunshine. “Say something in ‘prince,’” he said finally.

“Ycsss—sank—you—very—mush,” I hissed haltingly.

Frank’s unblinking stare brushed over my face with light, inscrutable finger tips. “We’re in,” he said, and roared into gear.

Frank drove to a house where his friends — none of whom had ever before seen the author — were watching a football game. Frank entered first and prepared his friends.

“Look folks, I’m in a little bit of a spot. I met a Saudi Arabian prince—”

“A prince?”

“King  Saud’s son. I met him at a party some Egyptian friends of mine threw in Beverly Hills the other night. He wants to see how Americans really live and he asked me to show him around town. I’ve got him out in the car and—”

“Right now?”

“Now. So look. I’m gonna bring him in. Now don’t panic! He’s a regular guy and he doesn’t want any fuss made over him. Just remember to address him as ‘your highness.’ But one thing — be casual!”

Blatty entered the room like a slumming prince.

I hastily spotted the most imposing chair in the room, marched over to it like Yul Brynner imitating Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and sat down, curling my fingers around the arm rest as though the chair were a throne, and, so help me, I felt majestic, even though I was wearing desert boots, Bermuda shorts and a loud, peppermint-striped shirt.

“Do you like football, your highness?” asked Denny Owen, a rugged college footballer.

“Foutball?”

“Ah—don’t they play football in your country?”

“I—sink—no.”

“Well…” and he good-heartedly launched into an explanation of the game. This seemed to ease the tension considerably, and someone else asked me if I would like a beer. I gave him the royal “oui” and Denny and Frank went into the kitchen.

I overheard their conversation:

Denny: “Cripes. I can’t hardly stand it! A prince! Here! And watchin’ the Rams on TV!”

Frank: “Take it easy, will ya, Denny? He’ll hear you.”

Denny: “What’s the deal on the candy stripe shirt, huh, Frank?”

Frank: “Oh, he’s just trying lo be one of the boys. Here, give him his beer.”

Denny: “A can, Frank—a can? We gotta give it to ‘im in a glass!”

Frank: “Nah, he’s a regular guy, I tell ya.”

Denny: “Well. O.K.”

And at this point I turned on my thro— er– chair, and saw rugged Denny carefully wiping and rubbing the top of the beer can with the tail of his clean white shirt.

Meanwhile, the Rams won the game, the TV was turned off and everyone became convivial. I learned later that some of the people in the room rather sided with the Israelis in the Arab-Israel dispute, but they were warm and friendly, and never gave a sign of their feelings. They were even suggesting nightclubs that they thought I should visit, places like the world-famous Mocambo.

Blatty was the toast of Hollywood that week. He appeared on talk shows and variety shows. He was invited to private dinners with movie stars. He succeeded beyond his most cynical dreams. The charade climaxed when Blatty got a chance to match his imposture against one of the country’s best fake princes.

One night a noted Hollywood publicist invited me along to an evening at ‘Prince’ Mike Romanoff’s. And thus it was that in the cool of the evening, ‘prince’ met ‘prince,’ ingenious imposter met up-and-coming challenger.

Entering Romanoff’s restaurant, accompanied by a studio publicity agent, Blatty seated himself with noble aplomb at a table. Within minutes, ‘Prince’ Romanoff hovered into view.

“Well, hello there,” he smiled genially, coming up to us.

“Hi, Mike. . . . Uh— your highness. Prince Kheer, may I present his highness, ‘Prince’ Romanoff?”

“How are you?” I murmured.

“A pleasure,” said Romanoff.

“His highness,” said the publicist, “is from Saudi Arabia. You know. King Saud’s son.”

“Oh. Of course, of course.” For one memorable, tremendous moment, Romanoff’s gaze locked with mine. It was toe-to-toe and there was silence in the arena.

The moment passed.

“Uh—by the way, your highness,” said the publicist, “there’s something I think you ought to know. I mean, I think I ought to tell you.”

“Iss what?”

“Well. “Prince’ Romanoff— he isn’t really a prince.”

Our shrimp cocktail had arrived.

“Iss what?” I demanded.

“They say he’s not a prince. Everyone knows it. But we like him so much we go along with the gag. No harm done.”

I put down my shrimp fork. “But iss not prince! ”

“Yes, but—”

“Sorry. I am insult.” And rising majestically, I strode out of the dining room, out of Romanoff’s and out of my life as a prince, because, brother, I believe in quitting while you’re ahead!

With that snub, that out-royaling Hollywood’s most famous ‘royal,’ Blatty returned to life as a commoner.

An Author Tries the Royal Scam for Fun The Saturday Evening Post

The former American actress and late Princess of Monaco has been dead for almost 28 years — a long time for a celebrity to hold the media’s interest.

What has brought her back to America’s magazine covers is an exhibit of her royal wardrobe at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The couture will be interesting, but the real attraction is the style of Grace Kelly, which becomes increasingly rare in a Madonna and Lady Gaga world.

Kelly didn’t just dress well and expensively. She was also an innovator and a successful proponent of high style. Her tastes were exceptional but, more important, she had the face, figure, and carriage that made good clothing look extraordinary.

Behind her style and her looks, though, was Kelly’s iconic power: her ability to exude elegance, charm, and poise, like those other classic archetypes: Jacqueline Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn.

Grace Kelly (left and right). "She's a lady and she expects to be treated like a lady," says Jimmy Stewart.Photograph by Gene Lester

It was also her fantastically successful life. In less than ten years, she became a well-paid model, an Oscar-winning actress, and a princess. For girls of a romantic nature, this is the Trifecta of daydreams. Grace had accomplished it all, and took her amazed fans along for the ride.

In 1954, the Post editors were intrigued by the meteoric rise of this young (well, 25-year-old) model and actress who, two years after playing a minor role in a minor movie, was starring in romantic roles with Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, William Holden, and Jimmy Stewart.

The Post’s celebrity interviewer, Peter Martin, was aware of Kelly’s reputation before they met. She was, according to Hollywood sources, extremely cool, reserved, even haughty — a woman with “stainless steel guts.”

“When we sat down to talk, her face was expressionless. I saw only the surface of her eyes, not into them. She was poised, cool, collected, and wary. She said nothing — unless I asked her a question first. Once or twice, even when I put a direct query to her, she smiled and didn’t answer. However, little by little, she began to come out from behind her private Iron Curtain.”

She eventually relaxed just enough to joke about a story that had circulated in the tabloids.

“It had to do with her knitting a pair of sock for Clark Gable and hanging them on his tent, on Christmas morning, while they were on location for Mogambo. The way it had actually happened was different from the printed version — as such things have a way of being. She had tried to knit a pair of socks for Gable, but, like many another knitter with good intentions, she hadn’t finished them in time. ‘When I realized that I wasn’t going to make it, we were out in Tanganyika, in the middle of nowhere,” she told me, “and I couldn’t buy anything for him. So I stole a pair of his own socks. Each day I stole something else from him. On Christmas Eve I filled one of his sock with his own things and hung it up. It was a silly gesture, but he liked it. I am very fond of Clark.”

Gable received a telegraph asking him if there was any romance between himself and Kelly. Pete Martin followed up on the story that Gable told her, “This is the greatest complement I’ve ever had. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I’m not too good at the sly remark and the personal probe, but I tried anyhow. ‘I should think he would have been able to overcome that feeling,’ I said.

“Once more she smiled and didn’t say anything.”

Five years later, they met again, only this time Martin was interviewing Princess Grace of Monaco, wife of Prince Rainier III. It was a role for which she seemed ideally suited. Few actresses were better at portraying reserve and gracious nobility. She graciously answered his questions, at one point making an off-handed estimate about the size of her housekeeping staff.

“How many servants do you have in the palace?” I asked.

“‘I don’t know exactly,’ she replied. ‘There are so many different categories. We have servants attached directly to our household, and there are other servants in the place who take care of other people. But to answer your question, approximately two hundred fifty people work here in the palace. That includes carpenters, electricians and the like.’

“‘Does that include the [palace guards]?’

“‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘There are sixty to sixty-five of them.’”

“‘I’m curious why anyone would expect you to drop all you have here, which is so lovely and so idyllic,”‘ I said, ‘and go back to the rigors of movie making. It must be wishful thinking.’

"I do miss acting in a way," says Princess Grace, " but it is no real loss, because being married and having children is far important to me." Here she is with Princess Caroline, aged three, and Prince Albert, twenty-two months.Photograph by Philippe Halsman

“She did it again. She looked at me, smiled sweetly, and said nothing. I found myself hurrying along to my next questions.”

No one could ever accuse Grace Kelly of changing after she became a member of the nobility.

She was a woman of large ambition, willing to work hard to get ahead. She believed she had earned her success in Hollywood. But even she must have thought that becoming a princess was almost laughably implausible. But then, as Mark Twain once noted, “Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

Post script:

The story of European nobles marrying rich American women is an old one. An item in the Post of 1874 noted:

“How the foreigners seem to admire our American girls, or is it their fortunes that prove so attractive?  They come here and make their selections and are only too gladly accepted as a general thing.

“Mrs. Gen. Griffin has become the Countess Esterhazy; little blue-eyed Camille Webb is now the Baroness Von Havre; Miss Williams, of Georgetown, became the bride of Count Bodisco, and another Georgetown girl has given her affection to an Italian count, who has left her here, expecting his tardy return, which looks too prolonged to promise any realization… I wonder if the Turkish and new French ministers will secure American wives and fortunes?”

Marriages into nobility often raise the question of whether Americans can hold foreign titles. Federal laws permit dual citizenship, and even allow American citizens to retain titles from foreign countries. However, such titles have no legal significance; royal privileges in a foreign land only get a nod of diplomatic recognition in this country.

The stern republicans that founded the United States were always suspicious of nobility. They warned of the aristocratic habit of grabbing up privileges and precedent, and they wanted no such inequalities in the new country.

Yet Americans yearn for its own aristocracy: people who are distinguished by their learning, virtue, and public spirit — equal but superior. These would be “natural aristocrats,” as Jefferson described them in a letter to John Adams.

“I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society… May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”

When Grace Kelly returned to the United States, Americans were happy to call her “Princess” and “Your Grace” — partly for the novelty of speaking these words, but also because she had, in their eyes, earned the deference by her “virtue and talents.”

Read “The Luckiest Girl in Hollywood” [PDF].

Read “I Call on Princess Grace” [PDF].

[The Post sends out a special thanks for background information from fashion-and-culture writer P.J. Holmes.]

The Royal Role of Grace Kelly The Saturday Evening Post