The granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill who stole a cab from a stunned socialite and told her to “go f— yourself” is amazingly the author of a recently published etiquette book called “Social Intercourse.”
Edwina Sandys, 74, is a well regarded artist whose new book deals with issues by chapters with titles like Table Manners, Money Matters, Office Behavior and Party Ploys.
The book includes tips on how to eat your asparagus, what to say when you’re late to a seated dinner and guests are on the second course and a quiz to let you know if you are a social super star, social climber, social survivor or social disaster.
There’s nothing, however, on how to gracefully steal, or not steal, a New York City taxi cab out from under a fellow socialite – nor is there guidance on whether or not to swear when you are caught in the act of stealing the cab.
“Edwina has no idea who this woman is who supposedly recognized her from Palm Beach,” said her Douglas Elliman broker, Gabrielle Frank.
However, she did not deny the story.
Sandys is a long-time New York City resident – who was once socially presented at Buckingham Palace – and has recently put her stunning Soho loft on the market, as the Post reported exclusively. It is now asking $9.5 million – down frm its original $10.95 million. asking price.
Sandys and her architect husband, Richard Kaplan bought the home in 1995 for $950,000. They have held many a wild, and elegant, dinner party at their home and they are selling because they are getting older – in age, not spirit – and will be spending more time at their Palm Beach estate.
Philip Johnson once called their NYC home the most beautiful loft in Soho. It is in a historic 1859 cast-iron building and comes with five bedrooms, five plus bathrooms and a 1500 square foot mezzanine accessed by two staircases. There are also six cast-iron Corinthian columns and 11 foot high windows. The floors are the original marble and the radiators – made in 1874 — still work.
The SoHo loft is filled with Sandys’s thought-provoking work. Much of it is happy: colorful paintings and sculptures; lots of white and red. A lot of her work deals with female themes, from dancing butterflies and swaying sunflowers to Eve’s hand with the apple and a female “Christa” crucified on the cross. All of this is a world away from Sandys’s former life as a debutante presented to the queen and a political wife in her first marriage to Piers Dixon, the son of the British ambassador to France. They had two sons together and were divorced in 1970. Sandys became a Sunday Telegraph columnist and a novelist before she began to focus on her art.