Toto & Coco Book

Toto & Coco

By Alan Frame

Toto Koopman, beautiful, mixed-race, bisexual Vogue cover girl in 1930s Paris and lover of the all-powerful press baron and wartime Cabinet minister Lord Beaverbrook. Toto was raised in colonial splendour on Java.

Coco Chanel, brilliant couturier and parfumier, rich beyond dreams and friend of Winston Churchill, arguably the greatest ever Briton. Both the toast of Parisian and London high society.

World War II. One chooses to relinquish everything to be a British spy under threat of incarceration in a concentration camp; the other becomes a Nazi agent luxuriating in the Paris Ritz with her Gestapo lover. Two women, once friends, now united only in their will to survive.

Toto & Coco reveals the very best and the very worst of what can happen when the human spirit is taken to the edge.

An extraordinary true story.

When she killed herself in her room shortly after her homecoming, Churchill was desperate to get hold of the painting, lest it led to questions about their relationship. There was only one man he could rely on to succeed in the task: Beaverbrook. He did not let his great friend down.

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

When Toto was 17 she left for London to do what most girls of her class did back then: learn to be a lady. Her parents enrolled her at Miss Crozier’s Finishing School in Knightsbridge, the sort of establishment which was usually found in Switzerland.

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

Toto said she was drawn to Alexis and his siblings because of their lifestyle, which she considered ‘an expression of intellectual and erotic independence. Pleasure without guilt.’ She might have added: And other people’s money.

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

Winston wrote to his wife Clementine: ‘The famous Chanel turned up and I took great fancy to her – a most capable woman – much the stronger personality Bendor has been up against.’

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

When she killed herself in her room shortly after her homecoming, Churchill was desperate to get hold of the painting, lest it led to questions about their relationship. There was only one man he could rely on to succeed in the task: Beaverbrook. He did not let his great friend down.

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

When Toto was 17 she left for London to do what most girls of her class did back then: learn to be a lady. Her parents enrolled her at Miss Crozier’s Finishing School in Knightsbridge, the sort of establishment which was usually found in Switzerland.

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

Toto said she was drawn to Alexis and his siblings because of their lifestyle, which she considered ‘an expression of intellectual and erotic independence. Pleasure without guilt.’ She might have added: And other people’s money.

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

Winston wrote to his wife Clementine: ‘The famous Chanel turned up and I took great fancy to her – a most capable woman – much the stronger personality Bendor has been up against.’

Excerpt from Toto & Coco

London Scene