Obituary: Dowager Duchess of Devonshire dies

Deborah Cavendish, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and the last of Britain's six eccentric Mitford sisters, who turned her husband's ancestral estate into one of England's grand country houses and wrote books about it and her own fairy-tale life, died this week. She was 94.

Her son, Peregrine, announced her death in a statement, which did not say where she died or provide a cause.

On the jacket of her 2010 memoir "Wait for Me!" is a 1952 photograph of the regal duchess. In a long black gown, against portraits and period furniture, she is a figure of alabaster loveliness from another epoch — one of country estates and fox hunts, furs worn to bomb shelters and clever talk over tea with dictators. She was married to a duke, and, being a Mitford sister, could have hardly been conventional.

Sister Diana married a fascist in the presence of Goebbels and Hitler. Jessica was a communist and prolific author. Unity Valkyrie, in love with Hitler, shot herself when Britain declared war on Germany. As a child, Pamela wanted to be a horse; she married a fabled jockey. Nancy's books satirized the upper classes. And Deborah, tentatively, became a connoisseur of fine poultry.

The sisters had little formal schooling. Their emotionally detached Edwardian parents, who sent their only son to Eton, thought education was wasted on girls, who were expected to marry well. Her father, an irascible baron, hunted his children on horseback, with hounds.

At 21, true to her father's expectations, she married Andrew Cavendish, who became the 11th Duke of Devonshire, inheriting vast wealth, including a castle in Ireland and Chatsworth, a 35,000-acre Derbyshire estate.

NEW YORK TIMES

But the ever-ebullient, sometimes befuddled Lowe — who was the inspiration for the Martin Short comic character Jiminy Glick — was never paid for doing the interview show. It was on public access cable TV and available to a limited audience.

"He was on television," his friend and publicist Alan Eichler said, "and he never gave up thinking something big was going to happen."

Lowe, 85, died this week in Hollywood. He had suffered from emphysema, Eichler said.

Famous guests on the show, which debuted in 1978, included Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Eartha Kitt, Tony Curtis and Milton Berle. They would generally reminisce about their careers, with Lowe often interrupting to interject comments.

Sometimes he'd get so excited he'd make infamous goofs, such as when he asked a guest, "Marilyn Monroe went back with Joe DiMaggio after she committed suicide, didn't she?"

When Lowe couldn't get an A-lister for the show, which was the vast majority of the time, he would sometimes settle for a relative, such as Dodd Darin (son of Bobby) or Jacqueline Stallone (mother of Sylvester).

LOS ANGELES TIMES

John Slattery, a television newsman who reported on New York City and its environs for 35 years, covering stories from petty crimes to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, died this week at his home in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 63.