Madeleine Masson (1912–2007)

Madeleine Masson, née Levy, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She had an Austrian mother, Lili, and a French Jewish father, Emile Levy, a banker and diamond broker. On a trip to Paris with her parents, 18-year-old Madeleine met Baron Renaud Marie de la Minaudière, who was more than twice her age. She was dazzled by his declaration of love and the sable coats and jewelry he gave her; she thought he was Prince Charming. After their marriage, she took the surname "Masson" from one of his subsidiary titles. While pregnant with their first child, she discovered that it was her husband's mistress whose fortune was paying for the Baron's elegant lifestyle, and that Masson's only role was to produce an heir. Following the shock of this revelation, she had a miscarriage and got an annulment. She abandoned the aristocratic life for Parisian bohemia, and came to know writers such as Colette, Nathalie Barney, Anaïs Nin, and and André Breton, and artists such as Marie Laurencin and Pablo Picasso. She studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne and art at the University of Munich, and wrote for the literary magazine Les Nouvelles littéraires. After the outbreak of World War II, Masson returned to South Africa and worked as a journalist with The Cape Times. She married again after the war to John Rayner, a captain in the Royal Navy, with whom she had a son. They settled in England, and she started a public relations firm. She wrote plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs, and biographies of Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and of the Special Operation Executive agent Krystyna Skarbek, alias Christine Granville, among others. She also wrote her autobiography, I Never Kissed Paris Goodbye, published in 1978.