After the Met Gala debacle this week when so many B, C and D List Reality TV ‘Stars’ and Celeb’s (!) usurped the true meaning of the word CAMP which they interpreted as TRASHY, we look back at one of the real exponents of the art who never thought twice about it, as she was the very definition of English Aristocratic Camp at its very finest.
Dame Barbara Cartland always a vision in pink. lay on her chaise longue for years dictating her latest Mills & Boon romance to a team of secretaries. Averaging 20 novels a year in which very chaste virginal maidens where chased by devilishly handsome gentleman who rarely even dared steal a kiss let alone get up to any hanky panky. She became one of the best selling authors of the 20th Century
A loud extremely opinionated lady who was one of London’s most prominent society figures, she was a self proclaimed expert on everything. She claimed to have received 49 marriage proposals before she accepted one from her first husband. and then later in life ended up (via Marriage) as Princess Diana’s Step Grandmother.
When she died at the ripe old age of almost 99, Dame Barbara left behind 160 unpublished romantic novels. Check out this fabulous (and very typical) interview with the very camp lady herself.
Legend has it that neither her famous Step Granddaughter or The Palace approved of the loud mouthed Dame and she was very notoriously not invited to the Royal Wedding . She therefore spent the day with the St Johns Ambulance Brigade of which she was a Commandant , but no-one had the balls to tell her that in her uniform she looked a SS Officer in drag. Click on the link below.
