Anne de Courcy - Chanels Riviera: Glamour, Decadence, and Survival in Peace and War, 1930-1944

In the summer of 1938, the burning question on the Riviera was not what Germany was going to do next but whether or not to curtsey to the Duchess of Windsor.

It was less than two years since the Duke had abdicated the throne of England to marry, as he famously put it, the woman I love, but largely because she, Wallis Simpson, had already been divorced twice and no one knew whether she would stop at that she had been denied the HRH title that would have brought with it this automatic obeisance.

Would courtesy the Duke was insistent that respect be shown to his wife win over correctness and the feeling of some that neither of them deserved it?

It was fitting that they had come to the Riviera, the glamorous, golden, sun-filled coastline famous for uninhibited enjoyment and where nobody enquired too deeply into your past. Here, every year, the rich, the famous, the beautiful and the eccentric gathered to swim, gamble and soak up the sun in a hedonistic lifestyle that then seemed never-ending. As for any threat from Germany well, France had the impregnable Maginot Line, did she not?

That summer, it felt as though this state of things would go on for ever. By the thirties, France had become full of self-confidence. She was at the forefront of the arts, her ocean liners were the fastest and the most luxurious, her writers, her sportsmen and women, like the great tennis players Jean Borotra and Suzanne Lenglen, were known worldwide; no other nation could compete with her food, her culture and her couture. Frances prestige was epitomised by the greatest and most original designer of them all, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, more usually known as Coco Chanel. The Windsors were but the latest arrivals on that famous littoral. In early May they had leased the Chteau de la Cro from the press magnate Sir Pomeroy Burton.

It was not surprising that this celebrity couple had decided to settle here for much of the year. The coastline, its charming fishing villages not yet submerged under the later tide of building, was exquisitely beautiful, with sparkling blue seas, little bays, pines, groves of ancient olive trees, balmy air scented with rosemary and thyme, small houses covered with brilliant bougainvillea, pots of tumbling geraniums and colourful markets where the fish and vegetables of the coast could be bought fresh every day. No wonder it drew an increasing number of visitors.

Writers too had flocked to the Cte dAzur, many because of danger in their own country, or scandal. One of the wealthiest and most successful in the English-speaking world was W. Somerset Maugham, who had left England in 1926 following the arrest for gross indecency and enforced deportation of his American companion Gerald Haxton.

On Maughams gatepost at his house, the Villa Mauresque, was his personal talisman, the mystical Moorish sign that appeared on all his books the hand of Fatima warding off the evil eye. He was rich, generous and hospitable, his household with its thirteen servants running seemingly on oiled wheels and known for delicious food and entertaining conversation. Everyone on the Riviera accepts an invitation from Maugham at any time that they are lucky enough to get one, said another very successful writer, E. Phillips Oppenheim. That August of 1938, the Windsors did so.