CAIRO in the War 1939-1945 [w/ manuscript letter to Susan Mary Alsop from an unidentified friend]

London: Hamish Hamilton. Very Good. 1992. Paperback. Autograph; xiv, 370 pages; Signed by the author Duff Cooper's granddaughter Artemis Cooper on titlepage ""with best wishes / Artemis Cooper" Laid-in is a manuscript letter to Susan Mary Alsop, thanking her for the loan of this book (dated June 1996; signature illegible). From the collection of Susan Mary Patten Alsop, a popular historian and a pillar of Washington society, was the daughter of a diplomat, a descendant of founding father John Jay and served with her first husband Bill Patten at the American Embassy in Paris in the 1950s. Shortly after Susan Mary and her husband Bill Patten arrived in Paris, they were socially "taken up" by Diane and Duff Cooper. Within a year Susan Mary began an affair with Duff, "the love of her life" which lasted until his death on New Year's Day 1954. When her long ailing husband died in 1960, she married his friend Joseph Alsop, the journalist, the following year. In the 1970s she embarked on her own literary career producing "To Marietta From Paris: 1945-1960" (1974), followed by "Lady Sackville: A Biography" (1978), "Yankees at the Court: The First Americans in Paris" (1982), and "The Congress Dances: Vienna 1814-1815" (1984). Her Georgetown homes (both with and without Alsop) hosted dignitaries, publishers and a variety of interesting people during the 1960s and 1970s including such luminaries as John F. Kennedy, Phil Graham, Katharine Graham, and Isaiah Berlin, earning her the nickname "the grand dame of Washington society," (to which she rather objected). ; Signed by Author .