True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women in Paris

Meet the dazzling women of Paris: from Colette to Nancy Mitford; Marie Antoinette to Coco Chanel; Madame de Stael to Pamela Harriman; Napoleon’s Josephine to Edith Wharton. Rule-breakers and style-setters, demimondes and diplomats, these women were utterly diverse, yet all shared one common passion — Paris, the world’s headquarters of femininity.

At a turning point in her life, Lucinda Holdforth journeys to Paris and takes a very personal tour through the lives, loves, and losses of its celebrated women. She evokes the city’s incarnations from Louis XIV through the French Revolution, two world wars and the Paris of the new millennium. As she walks in their footsteps, she draws inspiration from the fascinating women who created and nurtured the world’s most civilized city. Sophisticated, witty, and intelligent, this entrancing travelogue will seduce and inspire every woman in search of her own true pleasures.