HOT COPY

“I have been called a bitch by the Aga Khan . . . by the Duke of Windsor . . . by King Farouk and . . . by old Joe Kennedy. At least I have been called a bitch by the best.”

So begins “ ‘Bitch!’ The Autobiography of Lady May Somerville Lawford”--outspoken mother of actor Peter Lawford--which hits bookstores (Boston, first) in two weeks from Branden Publishing.

Lady Lawford died in 1972 (her son died 12 years later); it was only after their deaths that the book could be published, said Buddy Golan, Lady Lawford’s fourth and final husband.

Among other things, Golan revealed, the book puts Bobby Kennedy at the scene of Marilyn Monroe’s death: “And the book uses the words ‘cover-up.’ . . . Lady Lawford always said what was on her mind. She was one of the first, in the early ‘60s, to comment publicly about the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe. At the time, people thought she was off her rocker. Today, of course, those relationships are pretty well known.”

Golan’s own relationship with Lady Lawford was never publicly announced. They married in Tijuana, Golan said. “That’s because I was a young UCLA college student and she was a dowager member of British aristocracy. And there was a tremendous difference in our ages,” said Golan, who was with Lady Lawford until her death at 83. (He wouldn’t give his age.)

In his addenda to the book, Golan, v.p. of the Florida Motion Picture and TV Assn., speculates that Lady Lawford died “an untimely death” brought on by “an overdose of drugs not by her own hands.”

He added ominously, “She was a woman who knew too much about people in high places.”