EVENING LECTURE
CHANEL’S WAR
By Richard Wallace
Monday, 8th September
Talk begins at 19:00
TIME & LOCATION
Date and time: Monday 8th September 2025 from 19:00 – 20:30
Location: The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Place, EH3 6QE
ABOUT THE LECTURE
This book was partly written within our very own members Library.
A few days after Paris was liberated from the Nazis in August 1944, the most notorious fashion couturière in the world collapsed on a hotel bed in Switzerland after escaping the French capitol and certain death. How did an exhausted Coco Chanel get there and who helped her evade warring Allied and German troops?
For 80 years, this incredible feat of courage, luck, and ingenuity in the midst of immense danger has been deliberately shrouded in disinformation and secrecy by family, friends, wary governments, risk-averse business partners, and fellow collaborators. But now, with the aid of new information contained in previously unreleased private French Résistance papers and a new assessment of discredited evidence from organised crime figures, what really happened to Coco Chanel during that fascinating and scandalous period of her life between 1944 and 1954 can finally be revealed.
Book is available for purchase at the event
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Armed with an Honours degree from the Australian National University, Richard Wallace became a journalist with the Fairfax newspaper organisation that included The Sydney Morning Herald, The Melbourne Age, The Canberra Times and the Australian Financial Review among its mastheads. Posted to Europe he covered the death of the Duchess of Windsor in 1986 and the subsequent Geneva auction of her jewellery collection in 1987. Leaving Fairfax, Richard joined the UK Independent shortly after its creation in 1986 at the request of eccentric founding editor Andreas Whittam Smith.
His focus was researching and writing long reads for the weekend magazines. These included profiles of celebrities, actors, authors, and business leaders: Yoko Ono required specific information about the time and place of his birth for her spiritualist before she agreed to be interviewed; he spent a week on the road with 1989 Australian Ashes team and was hospitalised for alcoholic poisoning; the poet Stephen Spender took him on a night-long drinking and gambling spree with the artist Francis Bacon through Mayfair; he found himself alongside Sean Connery in the Savoy’s public toilets before a publicity interview for The Name of Rose that he later wrote up as “I had a slash with James Bond”; he covered the World Chess Championships in Leningrad; Jeffrey Barnard bought him a drink at The Coach & Horses; he was the only reporter other than a representative from The South Wales Evening Post at the inaugural Dylan Thomas Festival in Swansea; and a befuddled Anthony Burgess mistook him for Rolling Stone founder editor Jann Wenner throughout a bizarre encounter in Prague.
All of which proved ample training for his career as a Public Relations executive with an American conglomerate across four continents before joining the Intelligence Services as a media analyst. His last posting was with the since disbanded Information Warfare Division within AUKUS.
In the meantime, he contributed commissioned pieces to The Cricketer magazine and The Mandarin online portal for senior civil service officers.
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for Supper
The Abercromby Dining Room is open from 5:30 PM prior to each evening event. Join fellow members or come with friends and make a night of it.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Mothers Day Lunch
Treat your mum to a delicious three-course lunch with tea/coffee in our beautiful Abercromby Dining Room for just £36 per person. Book a table of four and mum eats free.* Tables will be available between 12:00 and 14:00 on Sunday 15th March 2026. *On
Member only eventBreakfast Club
The Breakfast Club returns in March and is hosted by a RSC Member. Engage with fellow Club members and chat about a new topic of interest over a breakfast roll or pastry. Member only event