The Thin White Duke, David Bowie's 1976 persona, is primarily identified with his Station to Station album (released that year) and mentioned by name in the title track. Ostensibly, the Duke appeared more "normal" than Bowie's previous incarnations, with blonde (rather than red) hair and a stylish, cabaret-style wardrobe, but the massive amounts of cocaine the rock star consumed during this period made his personality, or at least the personality he displayed during interviews, more alarming than it had ever been. The Duke was obsessed with the occult, fascism, and Hitler -- he was even rumored to have given a Nazisalute at the Victoria Station in London.
As his drug habit ate away at his physical and mental health, Bowie decided to move from L.A. to Berlin, where he recorded the groundbreaking Berlin Trilogy (Low, Heroes, and Lodger) with Brian Eno.
Bowie's personality today bears almost no resemblance to that of the Thin White Duke.
[Station to Station - The Thin White Duke (http://www.angelfire.com/my/tvc15/)]
The Duke stands in the middle unperturbed as books and paintings crash around him, and I am reminded of the judge's description of him in his notorious 1985 court case as 'a short-sighted old man with odd habits'.
But probably the best thing the Duke ever did for Chatsworth was to marry Deborah Mitford, the youngest of the Mitford sisters, in 1941 and stay married to her all these years.
It was the butler's son wot done it and both son and butler gave evidence about the Duke's spendthrift ways and his habit of dishing out cheques to the stream of girlfriends who came to the house (including one who popped out of a door naked).
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