Today we are Turning Back Time to the golden age in Britain when men were men, women were (I guess) women, and Thatcher was trying to make us all as miserable as her, and Dame Barbara Cartland was unwittingly the inspiration for all the country’s drag queens.
Dame Barbara always a vision in pink was a quintessential English eccentric larger-than-life character whose own life was not quite as tame and pristine pure as those of her heroines in the over 723 romantic novels that she churned out. She would lie on her chaise longue dressed to the nines, clutching her yappy white dog whilst she dictated her latest novel to her Secretary. This usually took no less than a fortnight (she still holds the Guinness World Record for publishing the most books in a single year).
All the heroines in her books were virgins, and even when they married the word ‘sex’ was never mentioned. In fact when she died an obituary published in The Daily Telegraph claimed that Cartland reportedly broke off her first engagement, to a Guards officer, when she learned about sexual intercourse and recoiled! It didn’t of course later stop her marrying twice … the second time to her first husband’s cousin …. and allegedly having affairs with Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Lord Mountbatten of Burma.
Her daughter the very pushy Raine aped her mother’s passion for hooking up with aristocrats and her three marriages, at varying times, accorded her five titles: the Honorable Mrs. Gerald Legge, Viscountess Lewisham, Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer and Comtesse de Chambrun. When Raine became Countess Spencer, Cartland suddenly became step-grandmother to Diana (Spencer) the Princess of Wales, but the Royal Family didn’t invite Cartland to the fairytale wedding of the century, as Diana simply couldn’t stand her. The two women eventually made up much later after Diana’s divorce and Cartland is quoted as saying ‘ The only books Diana ever read were mine, and they weren’t awfully good for her.’
In the mid-1990s, by which time she had sold over a billion books, Vogue called Cartland “the true Queen of Romance” even though her very conservative views on relationships were so out of step with society’s stance. It was hard to avoid her in those days as her ubiquitous presence in the popular media always in her trademark pink dresses and plumed hats, and discoursing her outrageous views on matters of love, marriage, politics, religion, health, and fashion in her very plummy voice.
Look at this interview with Thames TV where she is keen to share her views on why she thinks she is so fabulous….
