Forget Not, Signed by the Duchess of Argyll
[Signed by Margaret, Duchess of Argyll] Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. Forget Not. First English Edition, 1976. Book is in very good minus condition; dust jacket is in very good condition—pages show moderate age discoloration. Book is inscribed, “To Gilles & Joan Sherry, with all good wishes & love, Margaret Argyll, June 1980.” Dust jacket illustration by René Bouché.
Books by or about Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, have been flying off the shelves since the debut of the BBC/Amazon Prime three-part series, A Very British Scandal. In it, Margaret is portrayed by Claire Foy, best known for sympathetic portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown. Margaret would have been delighted that an actress who played the stalwart-and-steady queen was subsequently cast as her. Alas, Margaret was a vastly more nuanced personality. Even so, Margaret was capable of great generosity to the underprivileged and unfailingly kind to animals. Moreover, it was to her benefit that the producers put a 21st Century “Me-Too” spin on her story, and correctly so. Though Margaret wasn’t blameless in one of the most sensational divorce trials of the 20th Century, her husband Ian, the Duke of Argyll, was worse. In this book, published half a century ago, Margaret glosses over her faults in the marriage, but what she gets right is that unlike the fortune-hunting duke, she went into the relationship with an open heart. Moreover, there was much more to politically and socially connected Margaret than her toxic second marriage. She had a fascinating life, which she covers in absorbing detail in this book.
“It did not take me long to find out that my husband—born on June 18, 1903—was a true Gemini. He was two people within one body. Each day, from the moment I woke in our bedroom, which looked out over Loch Fyne, I was never sure what his mood would be, and his mood could change within an hour.”
--Margaret, Duchess of Argyll