6 December 2014
Been and Gone: An eccentric duchess and a clown fanaticBy Nick Serpell
Obituary Editor, BBC News
The Duchess of Alba
March 28, 1926 - November 20, 2014,
The Duchess of Alba was probably the most eccentric figure in modern European aristocracy. She held more than 50 titles, including being a duchess seven times over, and it was claimed she could travel the length of Spain and always be on her own property. A noted beauty in her youth, her private life in turn fascinated and shocked Spanish society. On the death of her first husband, she married an unfrocked priest and, when he died, she set up with a civil servant, 24 years her junior. In later life it was widely suggested she had gone under the plastic surgeon's knife. But she denied ever having any treatment. Among the privileges that went with her rank were not having to kneel before the Pope, and the right to ride a horse into the cathedral in Seville.
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