Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, was once one of Britain’s most admired society figures, celebrated for her beauty, wealth, and fashion sense. But in 1963, a scandal erupted that destroyed her reputation forever and made her the subject of headlines worldwide. Born Ethel Margaret Whigham on December 1, 1912, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, she grew up in a wealthy family with business interests on both sides of the Atlantic. Her father, George Whigham, was a successful businessman who served as chairman of a major synthetic materials company, and the family enjoyed a life of luxury, with homes in New York and Scotland and holidays in France and the Isle of Wight.
Despite the opulence, her childhood was not happy. Her parents’ marriage was strained by her father’s many affairs, and her mother often used young Margaret as a go-between in their marital disputes. Biographers have drawn a direct line between that troubled upbringing and the scandals that would later define her life. Her first serious scandal came in 1928, when she was just 15.
During a family holiday on the Isle of Wight, she began a relationship with David Niven, who would later become a famous Oscar-winning actor. When Margaret became pregnant, her parents were horrified. For a wealthy family in 1928, an unmarried teenage daughter expecting a child meant social ruin. They acted quickly, taking Margaret to London for a secret abortion, which was still illegal in Britain at the time.
The experience was deeply traumatic and Margaret omitted it entirely from her memoirs. Remarkably, she maintained a cordial relationship with Niven for decades and even attended his funeral in 1983. The experience did not make her more cautious. In 1930, at 18, she made her debut at the royal court in London and was named “Debutante of the Year.
” She became one of the most talked-about society figures of the 1930s, appearing regularly in magazines and attracting a string of wealthy and influential admirers. She was briefly engaged to Charles Greville, Earl of Warwick, but called off the wedding at the last minute. She also had a romantic connection with Prince George, Duke of Kent. In 1933, she married Charles Sweeney, a wealthy stockbroker from an Irish-American mining family.
The wedding was one of the most talked-about social events of the year, and her designer dress is still displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The marriage lasted more than 14 years, but Margaret later described it as deeply unhappy. Both were unfaithful, and in 1943 she narrowly survived a terrifying fall down an elevator shaft. She eventually divorced Sweeney in 1947.
In 1951, she married Ian Douglas Campbell, the 12th Duke of Argyll, one of Scotland’s most senior nobles. Despite the prestige of the match, the duke was in severe financial difficulty, facing heavy post-war taxes on aristocrats and struggling with addictions to alcohol, gambling, and prescription drugs. Margaret’s family money helped save Inveraray Castle from being sold. The marriage quickly turned bitter.
The duke was physically and psychologically abusive, according to accounts later confirmed by his previous wives. By the early 1960s, both were thinking about divorce. Convinced his wife was unfaithful, the duke took matters into his own hands. While Margaret was in New York, he hired a locksmith to break open a locked cupboard in their Mayfair home.
Inside, he discovered a cache of photographs that shocked him and confirmed his suspicions. He then filed for divorce on the grounds of her adultery. The case went to trial in 1963 and drew enormous media attention. The explosive revelations transformed what might have been a high-profile aristocratic divorce into a national obsession.
Among the photographs were Polaroid images showing the duchess naked except for her signature three-strand pearl necklace in the company of an unidentified man. Another photograph showed her engaged in a sexual act with an unidentified lover. In an era when divorce itself was highly controversial, the case became a media circus. The duke alleged Margaret had affairs with 88 men, a claim widely considered exaggerated but which the press eagerly reported.
Rumors circulated about a stunning list of alleged lovers, including members of the royal family, senior aristocrats, and government ministers. The press dubbed her the “Dirty Duchess. ”
When the case concluded on May 8, 1963, the ruling was devastating. The judge granted the divorce but declared that the duchess was “a completely immoral woman” whose sexual appetites could only be satisfied with a number of men.
The comments were widely covered, ensuring the scandal would follow her long after the courtroom doors closed. Margaret retreated into isolation, initially moving to a remote village on the English-Scottish border. The divorce also caused a deep rift with her daughter Frances, who had married the Duke of Rutland in 1958. The two did not speak for more than two decades, often attending the same London social events while refusing to acknowledge one another.
Margaret filed several unsuccessful libel lawsuits against newspapers over their coverage of the case, which only further damaged her finances. Her attempts to rehabilitate her image, including writing a memoir and a book on hosting, did little to restore her reputation. By the late 1970s, she was facing serious financial difficulties. She opened her famous Mayfair home to paying visitors, but the income was not enough.
Years of lavish spending and poor investments had eroded her wealth. In 1978, she was forced to sell the house that had been her home for more than four decades. She moved to a luxury hotel and later was evicted for unpaid bills. Shortly before her death, Margaret finally reconciled with her daughter Frances in 1991 after their decades-long estrangement.
Two years later, she suffered a terrible fall and died on July 25, 1993, at age 80. She died penniless in a care home, her reputation never having recovered from the blow it received 30 years earlier. She was buried at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, beside her first husband, Charles Sweeney, who had died just four months earlier. Her story has continued to fascinate the public.
In 1995, a chamber opera about the trial was performed at the Cheltenham Music Festival. In 2021, BBC and Amazon Prime released “A Very British Scandal,” a historical drama series starring Claire Foy as the duchess, which received critical acclaim. More than six decades after her scandalous divorce, Margaret Campbell’s story continues to capture public imagination, a lasting legacy for the woman who was once one of Britain’s most celebrated society figures. In another famous British scandal, on February 21, 1782, one of the most sensational trials in Britain began at Westminster Hall.
Angry aristocrat Sir Richard Worsley sued his close friend Captain George Bisset for criminal conversation with his wife, demanding £20,000 in damages. For years, his wife and his close friend had been lovers in secret, and the revelations would make Lady Worsley the most scandalous figure in Georgian Britain. Born Seymour Dorothy Fleming on October 5, 1758, in Middlesex, she was the daughter of Sir John Fleming, a wealthy landowner, and Jane Conway, a rich heiress. She was raised largely by her mother after her father died when she was five.
After her mother remarried in 1770, the family moved to Harewood House, one of the great country houses of the age. Seymour grew into a headstrong young woman with a love of riding, cards, and dancing, quite unlike her more reserved older sister Jane. She stood to inherit a substantial dowry, drawing a line of wealthy suitors. In the summer of 1775, she met Sir Richard Worsley, seven years her senior and heir to an ancient Isle of Wight landowning family.
He proposed in less than a week, and they married on September 20, 1775. She was 17; he was 24. The marriage contract heavily favored her husband. While a fortune was assigned to Worsley, Seymour received only an annual allowance of £400, giving him control over the wealth she brought to the marriage.
She gave birth to their only legitimate child, a son named Robert, in August 1776. Behind the grand facade, tensions were rising. Seymour described her husband as cold, stiff, and painfully dull, while she was lively and attracted to flirtation. Rumors of infidelity spread quickly, and sources claim Sir Richard was remarkably indifferent to his wife’s affairs.
On one famous occasion, he reportedly discovered one of his wife’s lovers in the house at midnight, but simply let the man go rather than confront him. The most scandalous relationship was with Maurice George Bisset, a nobleman from an Isle of Wight family whose home was just four miles from the Worsleys’. Bisset was not a stranger but one of Sir Richard’s close friends. During the American War of Independence, Worsley was responsible for training militias in southern England.
He rented a house in Maidstone and invited Bisset to stay there. During that time, the affair between Lady Worsley and Captain Bisset became widely known. In August 1781, Seymour gave birth to a daughter named Jane, but whispers immediately circulated that the child was not Sir Richard’s. Despite widespread rumors that Bisset was the true father, Worsley acknowledged the child as his own.
Seymour, however, was tired of the marriage. In November 1781, she eloped with Bisset to London, staying openly at the Royal Hotel as lovers. She believed her dramatic flight would force her husband to agree to a divorce, allowing her to marry Bisset. But Sir Richard had no intention of giving up the wealth and status attached to the marriage.
He sued Bisset for criminal conversation. The charge prevented the wife from testifying because she was not a party to the suit. Sir Richard was suing Bisset, not Lady Worsley, and demanded £20,000, which would have bankrupted Bisset. At the trial in February 1782, Bisset’s legal team did not deny the affair.
Instead, they argued that Lady Worsley had many lovers before him, so he had not tarnished her honor. They also claimed Sir Richard was fully aware of his wife’s infidelity and had in some cases encouraged it. Several of her former lovers were called to testify under oath. One admitted that Sir Richard knew of a three-day liaison between himself and Lady Worsley and took no action to stop it.
The trial became increasingly scandalous, and Lady Worsley’s reputation deteriorated quickly. One of her physicians testified that he had treated her for venereal disease, an unheard-of matter to discuss publicly in a courtroom of that era. Newspapers, cartoons, and pamphlets detailing the salacious revelations were published throughout London. The court ruled in Sir Richard’s favor: there was no doubt Lady Worsley and Bisset had been having an affair.
But it awarded Sir Richard only one shilling in damages, the smallest possible amount. It was a devastating public insult, effectively declaring that while his wife was unfaithful, Sir Richard himself had tolerated, even encouraged, her relationships. The trial was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Sir Richard’s political career never recovered.
The full trial transcript was sold in London within days and became a bestseller, with even George Washington owning a copy across the Atlantic. Lady Worsley’s reputation was destroyed, and bawdy pamphlets circulated with titles mocking the couple. Sir Richard refused to approve a divorce, as he would have lost financially, and Seymour would have gained control of her dowry. In a dramatic turn, Bisset then abandoned Lady Worsley.
Her reputation destroyed, abandoned by her lover and the father of her daughter, refused a divorce by her husband, and disowned by her family, she was left destitute. She was also pregnant with another child by Bisset. After giving birth in 1783, she became the mistress of wealthy men to survive. She joined the “new female elite,” a support network for aristocratic women whose reputations had been ruined.
She took other lovers and moved to Paris, where there was greater tolerance for women publicly accused of affairs. She became a figure at the French court at Versailles and gave birth to another daughter who was raised by another family. When the French Revolution began in 1789, her situation grew precarious. She was arrested in 1793 during the Reign of Terror and imprisoned.
Her son by Worsley died during this dark period. Finally, in 1797, she escaped back to England. She reconciled with her family and lived quietly at her childhood home, Brompton Park. Sir Richard died in 1805 at age 54, returning from service as a British envoy to Venice, leaving behind enormous debts.
After his death, Seymour finally regained control of the £70,000 she had brought to the marriage, money that had been tied up in legal disputes for over two decades. She remarried a 26-year-old musician in September 1805, just over a month after her husband’s death. The marriage, which began shortly before her 47th birthday, was reportedly happy and quiet compared to the noise of her first. She died in Paris on September 9, 1818, at age 59, of an unspecified illness.
She was buried in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, where she rests today among figures like Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, and Jim Morrison. Known as Julie d’Aubigny, born around 1673 in Paris, she would become famous as La Maupin, a swashbuckling opera singer whose scandalous life made her a legend. Her father, Gaston d’Aubigny, worked as secretary to one of France’s most important men, Louis de Lorraine, Count of Armagnac. Her mother’s identity remains completely unknown, leading many to speculate that she died shortly after Julie’s birth.
Gaston was a skilled swordsman and a womanizer, and Julie grew up without a mother. Through her father’s work training the king’s servants, young Julie received a far better education than most, learning drawing, dancing, writing, and literature. From an early age, her father also ensured she learned to use a sword. During this period, dueling was so common in France that Cardinal Richelieu complained the streets had become battlefields, resulting in a ban on the practice.
Still, Gaston understood that to prepare Julie for life properly, she would need to defend herself. She became an excellent fencer, and as a girl, she considered her male peers equals, which was practically unheard of at the time. She grew into a strikingly attractive young woman with soft features and a tall, slim figure. When Julie was about 15, the Count of Armagnac took her as his mistress.
The relationship lasted about two years. When Gaston died around that time, he had apparently convinced the count to arrange a marriage for Julie to protect her reputation. The marriage was purely a matter of appearances: shortly afterward, her new husband was sent to work in Toulouse, while Julie remained with her older, more influential lover. She soon fell deeply in love with a fencing instructor’s assistant named Henri Séran.
The couple made their way to Marseille, with various accounts explaining their departure. The most common story is that Séran fought an illegal duel that ended in the death of his opponent, forcing him to flee to avoid execution. Along the way, the pair performed sword-fighting shows and sang in taverns to earn a living. During this time, Julie began dressing in men’s clothing and openly declared her bisexuality.
In one story, a man refused to believe any woman could fight as skillfully as Julie, insisting she must be a man. In response, Julie tore open her shirt and exposed her breasts, silencing the man completely. Her success in small performances made her dream of an opera career. She auditioned successfully for the Marseille music academy, performing under the name Mademoiselle d’Aubigny.
Her beauty, acting abilities, and powerful voice brought her immediate success. But her time in Marseille ended when she fell in love with a female admirer named Cécile Portugale. When Cécile’s parents discovered the relationship, they sent her to a convent to protect the family’s reputation. Julie packed her bags and traveled alone to the convent in Avignon, where her lover awaited her.
Pretending to want to become a nun, she was immediately accepted. Reunited with Cécile, they waited for a chance to escape. When an elderly nun died, the two secretly removed the body and placed it in Cécile’s bed, then set fire to the room. The resulting chaos provided the perfect cover for their escape, and everyone believed Cécile had perished in the flames.
Investigations led back to Julie. She was tried in absentia and sentenced to death by burning at the stake. During the proceedings, she was tried as a man to avoid further disgrace to the Portugale family. Within months, the once-passionate relationship faded, and Cécile returned home.
Julie traveled north to Paris, stopping at taverns along the way to sing, dance, and enjoy herself. Outside the city of Tours, three drunken men challenged her to a duel. She defeated them easily, ultimately stabbing one directly in the shoulder to end the fight. The man turned out to be a prominent aristocrat, the future Duke de Luynes.
When he discovered he had been bested by a woman, they became friends for life, with Julie staying at his side until he recovered. She eventually arrived at the Paris Opera, though she was not initially accepted. With help from acquaintances, she joined the company in 1690. She still had an arrest warrant against her for the Avignon events, so she had no choice but to seek a pardon.
Using her charm, she persuaded the Count of Armagnac to secure the king’s forgiveness. Louis XIV was apparently amused by her wild adventures, meaning she was now free to do as she pleased. Julie made her debut in December 1690 under the stage name Mademoiselle Maupin, marking the beginning of her career as a celebrated performer. Singing at the opera was challenging, with audiences known for misbehavior, but Julie achieved great success in Paris.
She played many roles and had affairs with both men and women. However, she didn’t truly earn her colleagues’ respect until she humiliated the company’s most famous male singer, whose arrogance she found unbearable. When he tried to court her, she rejected him, and he responded with an insult. Later that evening, disguised as a man, Julie waited for him outside the Place des Victoires and beat him with her cane.
When she had satisfied herself, she took his snuffbox and watch. The next day, the singer told the whole company he had been beaten and robbed by three men but had defended himself. Julie called him a liar, produced the watch and snuffbox, and his colleagues laughed at his humiliation. She remained at the opera for more than five years until her daring nature got her into trouble again.
In February 1696, while disguised as a man at a masquerade ball hosted by the Duke of Orléans, she attracted the attention of a very beautiful young marchioness. When the young woman’s three suitors took offense at Julie’s advances, they challenged her. At midnight, the four went to a garden on the Seine. Julie fought each one in turn, seriously wounding them all.
She returned to the ball and calmly told the duke the men needed medical attention. Once again, the king seems to have been impressed by her audacity, and no charges were brought. She decided to go to Brussels anyway, just in case the king changed his mind. There, she entered into a relationship with Maximilian II, Elector of Bavaria, which lasted a few months.
When he ended the affair, he offered her 40,000 francs as a farewell gift. Julie threw the bag in his direction instead of accepting it graciously. She nevertheless ended up with a pension of 2,000 francs and allegedly went to Spain with it. It appears she ran out of money in Spain and had to find work.
She secured a position as a lady’s maid, or companion, to the Countess of Merlino, but they did not get along at all. Planning her revenge before her departure, Julie hid some small horseradishes in the countess’s hair without her noticing. At a ball that evening, crowds laughed and mocked the countess until someone finally told her about the horseradishes in her hair. She rushed home in a rage, but Julie had already left for Paris.
By November 1698, Julie was performing again at the Paris Opera. Over the next seven years, she appeared in many operas, concerts, and even performances at the Palace of Versailles. These were the peak years of her fame as a singer, yet her chaotic behavior continued. Throughout those years, she reportedly attacked her landlord, threatened to shoot a duchess, and continued dueling and fighting with actors when disagreements arose.
In 1703, Julie fell madly in love with the most beautiful woman in France, the Marquise de Florensac. They reportedly lived happily for two years, the longest relationship in Julie’s life, and it seemed she had finally found lasting love. But Florensac tragically died of fever in 1705. Grief-stricken, Julie retired from the opera and retreated to a convent, where she remained for the rest of her short life.
She died just two years later at age 33. In 1835, the French writer Théophile Gautier published a novel based on her extraordinary life titled “Mademoiselle de Maupin,” helping to ensure that the name of the legendary sword-wielding opera singer would never be forgotten. Amy Lyon was born to a blacksmith in Cheshire, England, in the spring of 1765. She later took the name Emma Hart and married Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to the court of Naples.
She would become famous as the mistress of Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most prominent naval commander during the Napoleonic Wars, in a relationship that scandalized British society in the early 19th century. Born on April 26, 1765, near Neston in Cheshire, her father Henry Lyon was a blacksmith who tragically died just seven weeks after Emma’s birth. Because of her poor background, made worse by her father’s early death, Emma had no choice but to enter the workforce at a young age. By age 12, she was working as a servant, and shortly afterward she moved to London.
During her teenage years, she changed her name to Emma Hart and began a relationship with Charles Greville, a British antiquarian and Member of Parliament. The relationship lasted four years, until Greville ended it in 1785 by sending Emma to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, who was then serving as the British commissioner at the court of Naples. She arrived in 1786 and married Hamilton in 1791. As a woman in her mid-20s at the Neapolitan court, she became a prominent society lady, meeting many leading literary figures of Europe and becoming the subject of numerous paintings by famous artists of the time, including Gavin Hamilton, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Angelica Kauffman.
These paintings depicted Emma in classical and mythological style, often portraying characters such as Medea, Ariadne, and Cleopatra, which began to cement her fame throughout Europe. Beyond simply modeling for artworks, Emma used her talent for imitation and the prevailing gender concepts of the era to her advantage. She was a talented hostess with an ability to charm influential men, which later played a role in her relationship with Horatio Nelson. Emma’s life at the Neapolitan court in the late 18th century unfolded against the backdrop of major political changes in Europe.
In 1789, a revolution in France overthrew King Louis XVI, leading eventually to his execution in 1793. The French Republic became a political enemy of nearly all major European powers, which feared revolutionary principles spreading to their own territories. France found itself in nearly continuous war with nations including Austria, Prussia, Russia, and above all, Britain. It was in this context that Horatio Nelson arrived at the Bourbon court in Naples in 1793.
Nelson was already a prominent admiral in the Royal Navy, having served in senior commands in the Mediterranean. He had been blinded in one eye during an engagement near Corsica shortly before his arrival in Naples. His mission in the autumn of 1793 was to gather reinforcements for the renewed conflict between France and the European powers. Emma was first introduced to Nelson very shortly after his arrival in southern Italy, introduced as the wife of the British envoy to the Neapolitan court, Sir William Hamilton.
Emma was married, but Nelson was also married, having wed Fanny Nisbet in 1787. Fanny was a loyal wife, and while Lord Hamilton would soon accept the relationship between Lady Emma and Nelson, the admiral’s wife never accepted it. The attraction was quickly visible between Lady Hamilton and Admiral Nelson. The Hamiltons invited Nelson to stay at their official residence while he was in Naples gathering support for British efforts in the Mediterranean.
When he left after several days, it was clear he had made an indelible impression on the other. The connection might have ended there, but five years later, Nelson returned to Naples. By that time, the French were growing stronger throughout continental Europe, led by a genius general named Napoleon Bonaparte. While Bonaparte dominated on land, Nelson was the greatest naval commander of the age, a fact cemented by his great victory over the French at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798.
On his way back across the Mediterranean, he stopped at Naples in late September 1798. Lady Hamilton may have been shocked by the change in Nelson’s appearance. He had lost his right arm since his first visit and looked older than his years. The Hamiltons hosted him in Naples, and soon a full affair developed between the 33-year-old Emma and the 40-year-old admiral.
Lord Hamilton decided, for reasons that may not be entirely clear, to turn a blind eye to his wife’s infidelity with their guest. It is likely that Hamilton was sterile, and perhaps his guilt over not being able to give Emma children contributed to his willingness. By November 1798, news of Nelson’s relationship in Italy had reached British newspapers. From then on, Lady Emma and her already-famous lover were under the media’s microscope in England.
Some of their actions provoked passing interest, but most of Britain’s high society was disapproving. This obsession with the pair only intensified over the following years as they and Lord Hamilton returned to England. In 1799, a popular revolution broke out in Naples, eventually leading Napoleon to install a new French royal family there. As these events unfolded, many members of the British embassy and British community there began to return to Britain.
When they arrived in London in November 1800, immediate tensions arose between Nelson, his mistress, and Lord Hamilton on one side, and Nelson’s wife and family on the other. Everyone was aware of the relationship before their return, but the physical presence of the trio in England created tensions that could no longer be ignored. Matters came to a head when Fanny, Nelson’s wife, quickly realized that Lady Emma was pregnant with Nelson’s child. Unlike Emma’s husband, Lord Hamilton, she was never prepared to accept the relationship.
In an attempt to keep the peace, Nelson stayed with his wife and family while the Hamiltons lived separately at several London addresses. However, when Fanny issued an ultimatum telling Nelson to choose between her and Lady Emma, it pushed him to a decision. Before returning to active naval service in 1801, he began proceedings for a formal separation from Fanny, which was unusual in the early 19th century. In late January 1801, Nelson and Emma’s daughter was born.
They named her Horatia. With Nelson absent on a naval mission, Emma began courting high society in England to win public opinion for their cause. Remarkably, this may have increased gossip in London: the Prince of Wales, the future King George IV, admired Lady Emma at one of her social functions, though his attempts to court her came to nothing. That autumn, on Emma’s advice, Nelson arranged to purchase Merton Place, a house in Wimbledon, where the three of them — Lady Emma, Lord Hamilton, and Admiral Nelson — lived together openly.
Nelson returned to England when the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802 briefly ended the war between Britain and France. Lord Hamilton died in April 1803, finally easing some of the criticism that London society continued to direct at the trio’s relationship. But Lady Emma and Admiral Nelson were unable to enjoy a traditional relationship, as Nelson did not outlive Hamilton by more than two years. Nelson, the man who had suffered many injuries during his naval career, finally succumbed to one in 1805.
The peace between Britain and France had lasted only a year after the Treaty of Amiens. In May 1803, the conflict known as the War of the Third Coalition broke out. One of Napoleon’s main strategies in this renewed conflict was to attempt an invasion of Britain. To accomplish this, he needed to bring the French fleet northward through the Strait of Gibraltar into the English Channel.
When this was attempted in 1805, Nelson was given the mission of preventing it. On October 21, the Royal Navy under Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, off the southwest coast of Spain. No longer could any French invasion force cross from France to Britain. But Nelson’s most glorious victory was his last.
He was seriously wounded during the battle and died only three hours later. Emma was stunned when the news reached England and took to her bed for weeks out of grief. In the long term, however, there was the matter of Nelson’s will to deal with. The British state was determined to exclude Lady Emma as much as possible from the division of the admiral’s estate, and Nelson’s wishes that his estate and fortune be divided fairly and equally between Emma and his legal family were largely disregarded.
Emma received a lump sum of £2,000, Merton Place, and an annual pension of £500. But with the cost of maintaining Merton being far greater than this pension, Emma soon found herself in financial difficulty. Furthermore, the £500 annual pension also became the subject of another legal dispute with Nelson’s family. As a result, by 1808, she was in debt for more than £15,000, and attempts to sell Merton failed.
The story reached its lowest point in 1812 when Lady Hamilton was briefly imprisoned for failing to pay her substantial debts. A series of health problems followed in subsequent years. Eventually, friends collected some money, allowing Lady Emma and her daughter Horatia to escape to Calais, France. However, Emma died there just one year later at age 49, having increasingly succumbed to alcoholism and obesity in her later years.
A tragic end for a woman who was once famous throughout Europe for the paintings that depicted her beauty. Her story has endured, however, as she has been the subject of numerous books, songs, and films throughout the 20th century.