Lady Diana Cooper
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Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (August 29, 1893 – June 16, 1986) was a British socialite and actress who was best known as Lady Diana Cooper.
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[edit] Birth and youth
Born Lady Diana Manners, she was officially the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the former Violet Lindsay, but Lady Diana's biological father was widely supposed to be the writer Henry Cust. In her prime, she had the widespread reputation as the most beautiful young woman in England, and appeared in countless profiles, photographs and articles in newspapers and magazines.
She became active in The Coterie, an influential group of young English aristocrats and intellectuals of the 1910s whose prominence and numbers were cut short by the First World War. Lady Diana was the most famous of the group, but it included Raymond Asquith (son of H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister), Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Edward Horner, Sir Denis Anson and Duff Cooper. Following the sudden deaths of Asquith, Horner, Shaw-Stewart, and Anson — the first two in the war, the third by drowning — Lady Diana married Cooper, one of her circle of friends' last surviving male members, in June 1919. It was not a popular choice in the Manners household, since the bride's parents had hoped for a marriage to the Prince of Wales. As for Cooper, he once impulsively wrote a letter to Lady Diana, before their marriage, declaring, "I hope everyone you like better than me will die very soon." Tragically, most of them did.
In 1929 she gave birth to her only child, John Julius (now known as John Julius Norwich), who became a writer and broadcaster.
[edit] Career as actress
After working as a nurse during the war and working as editor of the magazine Femina, she wrote a column in the Beaverbrook newspapers before turning to the stage, playing the Madonna in the revival of The Miracle (directed by Max Reinhardt). The play achieved outstanding international success, and she toured for two years with the cast. Lady Diana subsequently starred in several silent films, including the first British colour films.
[edit] Social figure, wife of ambassador
In 1924, Duff Cooper gained election to Parliament, while his wife continued as a society celebrity. Her reputation became even more celebrated in France as the centerpoint of immediate post second world war French literary culture when her husband served as Britain's ambassador to France. During this period, Lady Diana's popularity as a hostess remained undimmed, even when it became known that the embassy guest list included individuals were suspected of collaboration during the war.
Following Duff Cooper's retirement in 1947, they continued to live in France at Chantilly, until his death in 1954. He was created Viscount Norwich in 1952, for services to the nation, but Lady Diana refused to be called Viscountess Norwich, claiming that it sounded like "porridge". She made an official announcement in The Times to this effect, stating that no matter her husband's change in rank, and therefore her own, she would continue to be known as Lady Diana Cooper.
[edit] Later years
Lady Diana sharply reduced her activities in the late 1950s but did produce three volumes of memoirs: The Rainbow Comes and Goes, The Lights of Common Day, and Trumpets from the Steep.
She died in 1986 at the age of 93.
[edit] Books about or influenced by Lady Diana
Philip Ziegler wrote Diana Cooper: A Biography (ISBN 0-241-10659-1) in 1981; it was published by Hamish Hamilton. Several writers used her as inspiration for their novels, including Evelyn Waugh, who fictionalised her as Mrs Stitch in the Sword of Honour trilogy and elsewhere, and Nancy Mitford, who portrayed her as the narcissicistic, self-dramatising Lady Leone in Don't Tell Alfred.
[edit] Titles from birth to death
These are Lady Norwich's formal titles; however, she continued to be informally styled after 1952, at her request, as Lady Diana Cooper.
- The Lady Diana Manners (1892-1919)
- The Lady Diana Cooper (1919-1952)
- The Rt Hon. The Viscountess Norwich (1952-1954)
- The Rt Hon. The Dowager Viscountess Norwich (1954-1986)
[edit] External links
- Images at the National Portrait Gallery
United Kingdom - "More Than Friends, Less Than Lovers" by William F. Buckley Jr; a New York Times book review of The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper.
