Behind the peacock throne / Minou Reeves. This item is unavailable.Behind the peacock throne / Minou Reeves

Reeves, Minou. Behind The Peacock Throne. London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986. 16 cm x 24 cm. X, 214 pages with illustrations. Original hardcover with dustjacket in protective mylar. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Clean inside with solid binding. Synopsis - In 1979 armed rebels stormed into Minou Reeves' office in Tehran. For ten days she was held prisoner in the basement, not knowing if she would live or die. Her crime was to work as International Secretary for Empress Farah Diba, and she was guilty, by association, of the infamous corruption that prevailed at the court of the Shah of Iran. Minou Reeves was released - having convinced her captors that she was herself disgusted with the excesses of the court and had remained working for the Empress only because Savak, the Shah's secret police, had threatened her life if she left. But she was kept under surveillance, virtually under house arrest, always in the fear that one caprice of the Ayatollah's regime could see her tortured or killed. Eventually she escaped Iran, aided by a man who died in his efforts to help her. This book is not simply Minou Reeves' own story. It is one woman's appraisal of why the Pahlavi dynasty crumbled and why the people of Iran have chosen another despot after deposing the Shah. The contrast between the extraordinary luxury at court, the corruption of the Shah's entourage, his own foolish nepotism and greed, and the poverty of the mass of a simple peasantry is staggering. From the 'winter court' in St Moritz where Minou Reeves first met Empress Farah, to the pointless cultural centres built by the Shah at the expense of real improvements in health and education for his people, the author observed the inevitable path to the collapse of a dynasty. And little by little her respect for the Empress shrank as Farah - in her Paris couture clothes - seemed oblivious to the needs of the people to whom she was onc..