10 DECEMBER 1927, Page 20

The passion of The Duchesse D'Abranks for that great gentleman

and namantic hero, Maurice de Balincourt, is now revealed in her .copious Memoirs edited.. by Robert Chant- 'nesse (Jonathan Cape. Price 16s.). Her love letters are now_ _published for the first time. The reader; like their original recipient, soon groiys tired of them. She tears her passion to tatters in a truly extravagant manner, and when she plunges her pen into her own blood she creates a sense of nausea.

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