SOURCE: A review of The Last of the Duchess, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXIV, No. 1, January 1, 1995, p. 36.

In the following review, the critic describes Blackwood's account of Wallis Simpson's later life as a "dark fairy tale."

[The Last of the Duchess is] the chronicle of dogged journalist/novelist Blackwood's quest to discover the fate of Wallis Simpson—for whom King Edward VIII gave up the throne and settled for the title duke of Windsor—after the death of her husband.

Blackwood's obsession began with an impossible assignment—reporting on Lord Snowdon, who had been commissioned by the London Sunday Times to photograph the duchess—a celluloid encounter that was never to take place because her formidable keeper, the female French lawyer Maître Blum, never permitted it. But in trying to sway the terrifying octogenarian lawyer ("If you do not write a favorable article about the Duchess—I...