LONDON (AP) – Possessions of a poultry-raising aristocrat who ran Britain’s grandest stately home, was friends with John F. Kennedy and adored Elvis Presley are up for sale at Sotheby’s in London.
The auction house is offering belongings from the estate of Deborah, the dowager duchess of Devonshire, who died aged 94 in 2014.
The March 2 sale includes insect-shaped jeweled brooches, a gyrating Elvis telephone, gifts from JFK, Madonna and Henry Kissinger and a pair of wooden chicken-carrying boxes monogrammed “DD.”
Sotheby’s U.K. chairman Harry Dalmeny said Friday that the items reveal “the private world of one of the most extraordinary women of the 20th – and frankly probably any other – century.”
The duchess was the youngest of the six witty, unconventional Mitford sisters who captured Britain’s imagination during the 1930s.