Her final, desperate flight to France was due directly to
her venal son-in-law running up astronomical debts in her name and, indirectly, to her own impulsive generosity to her family. She died two days before an equally debt-ridden Sheridan. The Duke, who gathered together all her portraits, commissioned a vastly expensive sculpture of her to be placed in Westmin- ster Abbey, where it was refused entry by ecclesiastical authorities. Claire Tomalin's biography is a far more fitting memorial than that somewhat syrupy statue (now, ironically, installed in Buckingham Palace). Thank the heavens Dora's story didn't fall into the hands of the Goofy Sisters, to be sprayed by feminist graffiti. She is her own proud monument. 'I find laughing agrees with me more than crying.' And so say all of us. A wonderful book about a remarkable actress and, as the Duke reflected after her death, 'one of the best of women'.
last summer
Philip Glazebrook
ONE HOT SUMMER IN ST PETERSBURG by Duncan Fallowell Cape, £16.99, pp. 310
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