SOURCE: A review of The Last of the Duchess, in The New York Times Book Review, March 19, 1995, p. 38.

In the review below, Gerston argues that The Last of the Duchess ultimately fails because Blackwood relies too much on speculation.

Caroline Blackwood's investigation into the last years of the bedridden octogenarian Duchess of Windsor—whose fragile existence was fiercely controlled by Suzanne Blum, her belligerent octogenarian lawyer—is a tale as bizarre as it is poignant. Asked in 1980 by The Sunday Times of London to write an article about the divorced American woman for whom Edward VIII renounced the throne in 1936, Miss Blackwood interviewed several dowagers—Lady Diana Cooper and Lady Diana Mosley, among others—who had hobnobbed with the Duchess. Their gossipy reminiscences about "poor Wallis," including some titillating anecdotes about Jimmy Donahue, the Woolworth heir with whom the Duchess was infatuated, are colorful and amusing. Miss Blackwood's...