Catalog Search Results

This will be the first serious yet sympathetic book by a female biographer to explain the story of how an American divorcee became a hate figure for allegedly ensnaring a British King from his throne. It focuses on the core conflict of her life in the 1930s, with particular reference to her impoverished American childhood as a motivation for her ambition.

Using copious materials--including diaries and scrapbooks--from the castle's archives, the current Countess of Carnarvon tells the story of Catherine Wendell, the beautiful and spirited American woman who married Lady Almina's son, the man who would become the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, while paying particular attention to the staff who offer the Castle continuity between generations.

"The critically acclaimed author of Serving Victoria brilliantly illuminates the life of the little-known Bess of Hardwick--next to Queen Elizabeth I, the richest and most powerful woman in sixteenth-century England. Aided by a quartet of judicious marriages and a shrewd head for business, Bess of Hardwick rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most respected and feared Countesses in Elizabethan England--an entrepreneur who built a family...

For fans of Downton Abbey: the enthralling true story of family secrets and aristocratic intrigue in the days before WWI. After the Ninth Duke of Rutland, one of the wealthiest men in Britain, died alone in a cramped room in the servants' quarters of Belvoir Castle on April 21, 1940, his son and heir ordered the room, which contained the Rutland family archives, sealed. Sixty years later, Catherine Bailey became the first historian given access. What...

Before she was the woman who enticed a king from his throne, Bessie Wallis Warfield was a prudish girl from Baltimore. Morton shows how she transformed from a hard-nosed gold-digger to charming chatelaine, taking us through Wallis's romantic adventures in Washington, China, and London.