Pavilions of the Heart

Lesley Blanch takes the reader on a uniquely romantic journey to the settings where lovers have come together for a moment, a night or a lifetime. Chosen carefully from those places in her travels where she has come upon a story that has fired the imagination, Blanch writes of Nelson and Lady Hamilton's scandalous affair conducted in a modest house near Wimbledon; Balzac's Parisian love-nest created for his Polish inamorata; the estate of Woronince in the steppes of southern Russia from where Liszt and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein had to flee; and the house overlooking Lake Lucerne where Wagner and Cosima von Bulow came together. She conjures Sultan Murad's room in the Seraglio and tells the story of Aurelie Picard, whose pavilion of the heart was deep in the Saharan desert. Replete with drama, history and passion, "Pavilions of the Heart" is a seductive and lyrical glimpse at the places where love has reigned.