SOURCE: "The Lady Vanishes," in London Review of Books. Vol. 17, No. 14, July 20, 1995, p. 18.

In the following review, Heller contends that Blackwood's account of Simpson's life in The Last of the Duchess relies too heavily on speculation and contributes little to her subject's story.

'As a siren Wallis Windsor had been a figure who had changed historical events more drastically than any other woman in human history.' If one could only believe that the Duchess of Windsor had changed historical events more drastically than Mary Queen of Scots, or Joan of Arc, or even Margaret Thatcher, then perhaps Caroline Blackwood's recycled revelations about the Duchess—her expertise at fellatio, her 22 carat gold bath-tub at Cap d'Antibes, the amusing tricks that her homosexual lover, the Woolworth heir Jimmy Donahue, liked to perform with his penis at dinner parties—might seem quite, you know, important. The disappointing alternative is that...