The rich, of course, are different from us. It’s not merely that they have more money. It’s that no one will say no to them. For Jocelyn Wildenstein, that meant she was known chiefly not for the record $2.5 billion divorce settlement she won in 1999 from her husband Alec, but for the surgeries which so distorted her face and led her to be dubbed “the Bride of Wildenstein”.
She and the French-born Alec Wildenstein were introduced in 1977 in Kenya by the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. He had a ranch close to Ol Jogi, that was owned by the fabulously wealthy Wildensteins, the world’s leading dynasty of art dealers. Alec was smitten and invited Jocelyn, herself an accomplished shot, to hunt a lion with