Diana Cooper: Autobiography; The Rainbow Comes and Goes; The Lights of Common Day; Trumpets from the Steep

Lady Diana Cooper's Autobiography #1-3

by Lady Diana Cooper

Three books in one: "The Rainbow Comes and Goes" "The Lights of Common Day" "Trumpets and the Steep" Most beautiful and influential woman of her day. Married to Duff Cooper. She is the first Lady Diana.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Autobiography

752 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Vincent Hernot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ye reader who enters this book, enter another world. A world so fantastically upper-class that any attempt the writer makes at passing herself off as a normal girl (for most of the first book, she is just that) becomes faintly ridiculous.
Diana Cooper was not (as she herself remarks) a writer: her style is rather plain, and her narrative is (too often) interspersed with extracts from letters - often, extracts that feel like padding and which slow down the pace. She also tries to protect too many people by giving us only initials, or by just not dwelling on them (she had Asquith in the house, she had Balfour, she was an intimate of Waugh, and of the Prince of Wales: they never come off the page at all). It's a pity because, while it was understandable then, it makes no sense now: it needs a good editor who'll remind us who those people were.
She was a scandalous woman at the time (wearing trousers, drinking and taking drugs, driving...) but that sense is lost in the turgidness of the narrative. She was said to be the most beautiful woman in England, with the wittiest and sharpest mind: perhaps by humility she does nothing with that, but without it not much is left: dinners, dances, holidays in Italy, boating, dinners, parties, dinners, dances, holidays...
The portrait of her class (daughter of a Duke) is interesting historically, but of her generation many men died in battle, and that, again, is rather muted.
A couple anecdotes are very good indeed (her meeting Stanilawsky, for example), some one-liners give us a glimpse of the formidable woman she certainly was, but overall it's a bit too bland. The fire she was known for, the wit, the free spirit: it's all downplayed too much.
I got through the first volume quite quickly, through the second with more difficulty, and am now officially giving the third a rest...for ever?

[Nick Pengelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than enough words have been written about Lady Diana Cooper's amazing life to render redundant anything I have to say. What I didn't know was that, among the multitude of Lady Diana's talents, was the ability to write - and write in a way that any writer would die to emulate. The three books that constitute her autobiography are brilliant and compelling. Read them!

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lady Diane Cooper, beauty and a wit, married to Duff Cooper.

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I own only Trumpet from the Steep. Couldn''t fine a listing for that single book