The credits on the dust jacket said "Ted Morgan" but that plain name belonged to one of the more unlikely stars of American journalism, Sanche de Gramont. The son of a French count and entitled to use a noble title, de Gramont was largely raised in the United States but occasionally dragged back to his French roots: he was conscripted to join the French army during the Algerian rebellion. However, his life and life’s work was in the US, where he wrote for the Associated Press and the
New York Herald Tribune. By the 1970s he abandoned his French byline and after becoming an American citizen, de Dramont opted instead for a more mainstream name (which was an anagram of his French surname). Morgan wrote 25 books, including three volumes of dashing memoirs and biographies of William S. Burroughs, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. A Pulitzer prize winner, Morgan died on December 13, aged 91.
