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Edwina: The biography of the Countess Mountbatten of Burma
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1975
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About the author
Madeleine Masson
22 books2 followersMadeleine Masson was a South African-born English-language author of plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs and biographies.
Madeleine Masson was born Madeleine Levy in 1912 in Johannesburg to a French banker, Emile Levy, and Lili, "a ravishingly beautiful creature with Viennese antecedents". On a trip to Paris with her parents, 18-year-old Madeleine met 40-year-old Baron Renaud Marie de la Minaudière. As she put it in her autobiography, I Never Kissed Paris Goodbye, "I was a small-town South African who was being offered Prince Charming on a platter, decked with yachts, châteaux, sable coats, jewels, townhouses and a coat-of-arms equal to that of the Valois."
Madeleine took her surname "Masson" from one of the Baron's subsidiary titles. While pregnant with her first child, she was informed by the Baron's mistress – from whom she had mistakenly supposed he had parted – that not only were they still linked, but it was her fortune that paid for the Baron's elegant lifestyle. Any disturbance to their relations, it was made clear, would result in withdrawal of her support.
The shock of this revelation caused Masson to miscarry. She abandoned the aristocratic life and embraced Paris' bohemia, studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne, art at Munich, wrote for the literary magazine, Les Nouvelles Littéraires. She had an affair with a South African, became the lover of the Swiss painter Géa Augsbourg, got to know Pablo Picasso and André Breton, and met writers Colette and André Gide.
Upon the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish-descended Masson left Géa Augsbourg, intending to return to South Africa. On the train to Bordeaux, she was persuaded to join the French Resistance. She later recalled this period, during which she carried messages and helped escapees, as a time of "total horror". In later years, she helped Tim Buckmaster, son of Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE's F (French) Section, prepare a biography of his father.
During a trip to visit Napoleon's tomb on Saint Helena, Masson met Captain John Rayner. After a courtship, they contracted a marriage that was to last 32 years.
While running the family home in Bosham, West Sussex, England, Masson started an early public relations firm. All the while, she wrote plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs, biographies. The most famous were her autobiography and her biographies of Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and of the celebrated SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek (aka Christine Granville).
As late as spring 2007, Masson was busy revising an earlier novel about the German massacre on 10 June 1944 of the villagers of Oradour, near Limoges, France, and working on a biography of Baroness Emma Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Madeleine Masson was born Madeleine Levy in 1912 in Johannesburg to a French banker, Emile Levy, and Lili, "a ravishingly beautiful creature with Viennese antecedents". On a trip to Paris with her parents, 18-year-old Madeleine met 40-year-old Baron Renaud Marie de la Minaudière. As she put it in her autobiography, I Never Kissed Paris Goodbye, "I was a small-town South African who was being offered Prince Charming on a platter, decked with yachts, châteaux, sable coats, jewels, townhouses and a coat-of-arms equal to that of the Valois."
Madeleine took her surname "Masson" from one of the Baron's subsidiary titles. While pregnant with her first child, she was informed by the Baron's mistress – from whom she had mistakenly supposed he had parted – that not only were they still linked, but it was her fortune that paid for the Baron's elegant lifestyle. Any disturbance to their relations, it was made clear, would result in withdrawal of her support.
The shock of this revelation caused Masson to miscarry. She abandoned the aristocratic life and embraced Paris' bohemia, studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne, art at Munich, wrote for the literary magazine, Les Nouvelles Littéraires. She had an affair with a South African, became the lover of the Swiss painter Géa Augsbourg, got to know Pablo Picasso and André Breton, and met writers Colette and André Gide.
Upon the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish-descended Masson left Géa Augsbourg, intending to return to South Africa. On the train to Bordeaux, she was persuaded to join the French Resistance. She later recalled this period, during which she carried messages and helped escapees, as a time of "total horror". In later years, she helped Tim Buckmaster, son of Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE's F (French) Section, prepare a biography of his father.
During a trip to visit Napoleon's tomb on Saint Helena, Masson met Captain John Rayner. After a courtship, they contracted a marriage that was to last 32 years.
While running the family home in Bosham, West Sussex, England, Masson started an early public relations firm. All the while, she wrote plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs, biographies. The most famous were her autobiography and her biographies of Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and of the celebrated SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek (aka Christine Granville).
As late as spring 2007, Masson was busy revising an earlier novel about the German massacre on 10 June 1944 of the villagers of Oradour, near Limoges, France, and working on a biography of Baroness Emma Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
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