Last of the Dandies: The Scandalous Life and Escapades of Count D'Orsay

Last of the Dandies: The Scandalous Life and Escapades of Count D'Orsay by Foulkes, Nick. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780312272562.

From his first appearance in London in 1821 until his death in Paris in 1852, Count DOrsay dominated and scandalized the whole of European society. For three decades he was the ultimate arbiter in matters of taste and style -- what DOrsay wore today, society would wear tomorrow. He also enthralled Society with the thirty-year soap opera of his relationship with Lady Blessington,whose daughter he married and with whose husband he was supected of having had an affair. Bisexual, flamboyant and outrageous, DOrsay was said to have ruined the cream of British aristocracy. He toured Europe on an enormous spending spree; paid homage to a dying Lord Byron in Italy, set up a racing course in Notting Hill and a gambling den in St Jamess. Nick Foulkes vivid biography of an astonishingly flamboyant figure is also the dazzling portrait of an era.