Stella TillyardReseñas

Too much of a biography for me. So many names of people doing this and that…hard to keep my interest.

Summoned to England in 1649 to help oversee the draining and development of wetlands called the Great Level, Jan Brunt, a Dutch engineer, seeks professional advancement. A reserved, taciturn man who outwardly reveals little other than his seriousness of purpose, within, he harbors great passion for the natural world he would master.

Sharp-eyed and introspective, Jan follows currents of thought like the watercourses he strives to control, both of which lead him to startling places. Most significantly, his ramblings bring him to Eliza, a reactive, passionate woman of the fens where he measures and surveys. Such people, according to Jan’s informants, are half-savage and of no account. But Eliza and Jan begin an affair that prompts him to question much of what he thought he knew of life.

From this tantalizing premise, Tillyard weaves a narrative at once physical and metaphysical, using the most basic elements, water and land. With an elegant simplicity I admire, Call Upon the Water explores what land and water mean, how will and freedom struggle against natural and human-made obstacles, and what that implies for love between two people of very different worlds and outlooks.

Consequently, Tillyard offers a profound look into our essential surroundings, which usually pass unnoticed because they’re constantly within sight. Her novel gradually takes you over, giving you much to ponder, a magic that begins with her deceptively simple prose, with which she establishes the way things work in the 1650s, whether she's recounting Jan’s surveying procedures, describing the harbor of Nieuw Amsterdam (which figures in the story), or narrating how indentured servants live in North America.

These vivid pictures show Tillyard’s grasp of social history, and a deep one it is. What a shame, then, that the jacket flap reduces this rich, complex portrait to a bland recitation that goes out of its way to spoil the story, recounting the action up until about the last thirty pages. If you read Call Upon the Water — and there are good reasons to do so — do not, repeat, not look at the jacket flap.

Now that I’ve said that, I confess I wound up liking the book less than I thought I would. That’s partly because the storytelling jumps around from the Great Level to Nieuw Amsterdam and elsewhere like a restless traveler. It’s as though Tillyard has set her sights on a circular narrative with two beginnings that eventually meet, and she’s invested too much in this device to back away from it.

But if we’re meant to be surprised on reaching that long-awaited junction, the resulting aha! doesn’t justify the heavy lifting required to get there. Similarly, when Jan realizes he loves Eliza, a shift in narrative perspective calls undue attention to itself, an affectation particularly unnecessary, since the words already convey how smitten he is. Tillyard doesn’t need artifice to tell this, or any other, story.

Conversely, she seems oddly unwilling to clarify certain aspects of her narrative, perhaps because she fears to show or tell too much, another form of artifice. Still, I want to know why Eliza behaves in certain ways, or what she sees in Jan, worthy though he is; yet, for much of the novel, she’s a shadow figure. When her voice finally appears toward the end, it’s a shock, more so because I don’t find her entirely credible.

To cite one example, she says, “No man should think because I am a woman and a slighter shaped, that my eyes and my thoughts are smaller than theirs. That is a mistake easy to fall into, as others have done.” This confident statement forms part of a robust feminist credo.

But I don’t know how she comes to this attitude, which surely begs for explanation, especially in 1650. Nor do I understand how Jan and Eliza manage to ignore conflicts inherent in their relationship—not that they have to talk them through, but they should at least recognize that they’re there. All you know is that Eliza claims a preternatural ability to house deep or inconvenient feelings in well-contained, separate compartments. I’m not convinced.

Despite these reservations though, Call Upon the Water is a portrayal of life seldom seen, with much to reflect on, told in marvelous prose.

Interesting biography - of a rebel who died fighting for justice for Ireland

I very much liked this rich historical fiction about the draining of the Fens and New Amsterdam. Tillyard captured the sense of the time period and the people. I've visited some of the areas that Jan, is working on near Upwell and the Great Level, and she captures the mystery and atmosphere then. It's not a book that will grab you and pull you in, it's a slower pace in the building of the love story and characters, but they are very good. It was interesting because of my husbands family history there.

Although the title of Stella Tillyard's 'A Royal Affair' is intended to carry two meanings, it certainly signals its main preoccupation, the affair between George III's sister Caroline Mathilde and her doctor which led to a second coup and eventually her early death. This story, although undoubtedly interesting, occupies perhaps a disproportionate amount of space in the book. All that research in Danish archives and associated work which the author is keen to tell us about might have been better used for a separate book on the adulterous Queen of Denmark (there was after all a recent film on the subject), leaving this book about George III's siblings to have a better balance.
His brothers, although they undoubtedly led less glamorous lives are, one feels, a bit of a distraction. The book is still well worth reading; Ms Tillyard's skills in synthesising masses of material into readable narrative history are far from wasted. She is good at painting backgrounds and contexts, and showing us the milieu in which these most privileged, although often unhappy, people lived. The author is heavily biased against the king, although she strives to note some good points about him and the pressures he was acting under. So, the book is readable, informative and entertaining, and worth buying. But not so impressive as 'Aristocrats'.

Exceptionally accomplished piece of narrative history about the lives of four of the Lennox sisters in 18th century England. Although based on substantial archival research, it wears this lightly; this is not an academic work with full references. Those who have seen the TV series made from it will have glimpsed some of its qualities; but that missed some of the best bits, for example the extensive descriptions of the physical milieux in which life was conducted at that time, which are beautifully written.

Call Upon the Water by Stella Tillyard is a historical novel that takes place in the Netherlands, Great Britain and the American colony of Virginia in the mid-1600s. Jan Brunt is an engineer talented in mapmaking and his skills are prized.

He is hired to drain and develop wetlands in the Great Level in Great Britain while doing so he meets Eliza, a woman who he immediately falls in love with. They spend a lot of time together and she learns how to read from him and how to read the maps. She betrays him and is punished and sent off to be an indentured servant in Virginia, a chapter or two devoted to this time in her life I found refreshing. Jan goes to America unbeknownst to him that she is there. He is hired to drain the swamp if you will in Dutch American colony of New Netherland, New York today.

One day a boy delivers a message that Eliza wants to meet with him, she is a free woman by this time and wealthy. He mulls this over for a long time. Want to learn more, then you have to get the book.

What I liked about the book, I enjoyed learning about what Jan's trade was, the era, as I love historical fiction and just the geographical areas in the story. What I didn't like was that it was very wordy and not a lot of dialogue. To me, that can put a person to sleep very easily. Guess I have not read a lot of books written this way. Not to say that it was not informative, just that I got bored frequently. I persevered and did find that I did like the book. I give it 4 stars.

Really good nonfiction about 4 wealthy sisters who lived in the 1700-1800s. They wrote many, many letters that Tillyard combs through to paint a picture of their lives. I always love reading about how women lived in other eras so this book was pretty interesting to me. Lots of info about marriage, child-bearing and rearing, love affairs, and politics. Obviously, not a look into "everyday" life as these women were very privileged, and it doesn't go much into daily things like food, clothing, comforts, but I found it interesting overall. This was written in 1994 and I gather it was an earlier example of historical writing focused on women in a narrative way.

The lives of the four daughters of the Duke of Richmond in the 18th century.

Fascinating look at a set of women's lives that included elopements, good and bad marriages, defiance of convention, royalty, radicalism and revolution.

It doesn't sound like a promising topic does it? How the stolid George III - in the years before his porphyria and before losing America - was bothered by the reluctance of his siblings to adhere to standards of morality befitting Hanoverians. But its more interesting than it sounds - this all takes place at the dawn of broadcast media, as newspapers and pamphlets become widely read, by the elite at least, and their publishers discover for the first time the selling power of celebrity. And discover that scandalous behaviour of the royal family sell extremely well. So the scandalous behaviour of George's brothers Edward, William and Henry provided titilation for the masses and provide the first media studies cases. Not that we would consider their behaviour all that scandalous, they just married inappropriate people and were bored out of their wits from having no proper to job to do.

Its Caroline Matilde who is the star of the show. Shipped out as a teenager to marry in the interest of dynastic politics, as was the fate of Germanic princesses, she finds her self married to "mad" King Christian of Denmark - these days he seems more eccentric than "mad" and mostly just not very interested in being King - tries to do what is expected of her, but ends up (through boredom again) having a fairly open affair with the Royal doctor, supporting him in his ascent to power through manipulation of King Christian (who is basically willing to sign anything put in front of him), living a bohemian lifestyle, promoting a more open form of government, and generally enjoying herself. Of course such scandalous behaviour couldn't be permitted to continue and it all comes crashing down, with Caroline Matilde dying young. But no one could deny, she'd done it her way

To this is an interesting book and well researched with the author going to the trouble to learn Danish to read the gothic script of the Danish court in the original. There are lots of amusingly bitchy letters between courtiers quoted and humorously salacious trivia about courtesans and lords who should know better. But mainly, its about the birth of the cult of celebrity and very revealing

I was not wild about this book. It was a disappointment, because I liked Tillyard's book Aristocrats very much. But I did not think this book was particularly well-written, and the story never really grabbed me. Part of the problem, I think, is that I am not all that interested in the time period; but the other part of the problem is that I never believed Harriet and James as real people. Just didn't work for me.

I didn't know much about Edward Fitzgerald until I picked up this book, other than he lived during an era I find fascinating. As I delved into this biography, I learned a lot about the culture of the 18th-century British aristocracy and Fitzgerald's unique family. Still, it was until the later chapters, when Fitzgerald matured, married, and started plotting an uprising that I really became interested. I knew that France had encouraged Irish rebellions at various points in history, but I was unfamiliar with this case and it was fascinating to see the story unfold, even if it did not end well for Fitzgerald.

The 18th-century Hanover dynasty had more than its share of scandal, but I knew little about George III's sister Caroline Mathilde, the Queen of Denmark, prior to this book. While George III and each of his siblings who survived into adulthood are covered, Caroline Mathilde definitely steals the show - she was unhappily married to the Danish king in her teens, had an affair with her husband's doctor as her husband descended into madness, practically ruled Denmark with her lover for a brief period before a coup forced her to flee, and she spent the remainder of her days plotting a comeback before dying of scarlet fever at the age of twenty-three. A truly fascinating woman and one certainly in good company with her scandalous brothers, even if she gave King George III plenty of headaches. This is certainly both fun reading and a good way to highlight a lesser-known 18th-century figure.

I was not wild about this book. It was a disappointment, because I liked Tillyard's book Aristocrats very much. But I did not think this book was particularly well-written, and the story never really grabbed me. Part of the problem, I think, is that I am not all that interested in the time period; but the other part of the problem is that I never believed Harriet and James as real people. Just didn't work for me.

A mixture of biography and history, this is a detailed look at the lives of members of an aristocratic family in Georgian England. The author did an impressive amount of research into both the minutiae of the four sisters' lives and the politics of the period. She quotes extensively from their letters and journals, which provides a sense of immediacy to the narrative. I was left thinking how much social change there can be over the centuries, yet human nature and behaviour remain the same.

Although the book is ostensibly about King George III of England and his numerous siblings, it is mostly about George and his youngest sister, Caroline Matilda. Tillyard follows their claustrophobic childhood and uneven educations, until they were separated when George took the throne and Caroline Matilda was married to the unstable King of Denmark, Christian VII. Teenaged Queen Caroline Mathilde tried to be a good queen, but her husband was going mad. She fell in love with Struensee, his idealistic doctor, and together the lovebirds ruled the King and the government. In the king's name they pushed through numerous reforms, all very good and necessary laws but very unpopular. Eventually, the king's step-mother and step-brother managed a coup, separating the queen and the doctor and ousting the humanist government. Caroline Mathilde physically struggled against her captors, but to no avail. She was locked in Kronberg slot (aka Elsinore) for months while the conspirators attempted to find proof of her adultery with Struensee. Struensee, like a dolt, confessed to everything and then, going against a lifetime of proud atheism, swore that he believed in Jesus Christ. He was brutally executed soon after. George III almost started a war to get his sister back to England, but after only a few tense months her divorce went through. The new Danish government shipped her away as quickly as they could, afraid of her influence over the king. Caroline Mathilde spent her remaining years with a large allowance from George III and no freedom. Her mail was opened, her servants chosen for her, and her visitors carefully vetted. After three years of this life, and a few desultary attempts to regain her throne, she died abruptly of scarlet fever.

Caroline's brothers, Edward, William and Henry, lead useless lives. Edward died young. William married a woman rather older, whose thwarted ambition made him miserable. Henry and his wife were rackety and seemingly happy, but certainly nothing but a drain on the treasury. And their oldest living brother, George III, was a priggish, rule-bound man who seems to have had little political insight and even less empathy. I didn't like any of the siblings, although I did pity them.

This is the story of four daughters of the second Duke of Richmond. Great-granddaughters of King Charles II, wealthy, titled, and intimate with the political leaders of the realm, the Lennox sisters were envied by many and watched by all. Their story lasts almost a century; it "begins in 1744, as the Jacobites were planning their last, desperate assault on the Hanoverian throne, and ends in 1832, five years before the beginning of the Victorian Age." The eldest, Caroline, eloped and became a rich and famous political hostess. Her eldest son was a dissolute wastral; her second son, Charles Fox, became an infamous politician. The second girl, Emily, married the Duke of Leinster, the first peer of Ireland. After their parents' deaths, Emily raised her much younger sisters Louisa and Sarah amidst her own gigantic brood (she had, in all, 22 children, only half of whom survived to adulthood). Emily arranged a marriage for Louisa to the richest man in Ireland, Thomas Conolly. King George III loved young Sarah, but was convinced to marry a German princess for matters of state. Sarah was pushed into a marriage with Thomas Bunbury, a man of little sense, money, or desire for his teenaged bride. Their marriage was deeply unhappy, and Sarah had a very public affair, forcing Bunbury to separate and eventually divorce her. She and Emily each remarried later in life, and had very happy marriages to men of significantly less money and social standing. Every sister but Louisa had a cavalcade of children. And every sister maintained a long, intimate relationship via letters.

Thanks to those letters, and Tillyard's incredible scholarship, the modern age has a pretty good idea of their personalities and daily lives. The sisters themselves are vividly drawn and oft quoted (I'm a sucker for reading the actual words of historical figures), but what truly impressed me was the detail of their surroundings. How their servants were treated, what kind of decorating was in style, how one behaved in Bath, what London was like (the description of London "waking up" every morning was particularly impressive)...Tilyard assembles all this flotsom and arranges it into a coherent world.

This takes the lives of a family, concentrating on the four sisters, as a biography of both a family and a time. The correspondence between the family forms the core of the research, with events being shown by way of how they affected the family and how they were recorded in their letters. As individuals, they certainly got up to quite a lot. Caroline eloped and married a man 15 years older than her, Emily had an affair and married her children's tutor, Sarah managed to get into more romantic tangles than you'd have thought possible, but did eventually marry someone she loved, Louisa was, in that regard, the odd one out, being married but the once and with the family's approval.
The many children of the sisters are also discussed, with the political careers and involvement in the Irish uprising being two notable events that they were involved in on various sides.
At one level, the correspondence is about the little things in life, the day to day of being a sister, wife and mother; at another level, it's a fascinating window onto events where they are close to the main players. The mixture of the two makes them seem very real, and the sentiment can be read as being very modern (apart from the language used).
It gets a tad confusing when there are multiple people with the same first name, even within one family, but the author makes an effort to explain who is who as it moves along. At times there seemed to be quite long gaps in the narrative, so we skip from the Irish uprising to the early 1800s with the turn of a page, but that would be a minor quibble. If you're at all interested in social history, this is a very good read.

Very well written and not at all dry and academic, an important point in popular history writing. The sections about Caroline Mathilde and Denmark could possibly have made an entirely separate book as her story takes up a vast portion of the middle of this book. Although the book kept me engaged throughout, the author appears to become less coherent in the last quarter, almost as if she had not taken the same time or care when writing the last section.

George III comes across as a middle-class citizen in this book, which echoes history's take on him. His siblings were anything but normal, which caused the family-oriented George some major headaches. Who knows, perhaps it contributed to his later madness. If he lived today, the press would tear him apart for his family hiccups. In fact, George comes across as a decent man who preferred the average Brit over his Germanic-speaking parents and cousins. This is well-written and keeps the reader involved with George and his history.

Book Season = Summer

Wow that was great fun. Tillyard does a terrific job of telling the stories of the lives of the Lennox sisters. The lives are eventful and full of human drama and historical interest. The book is absorbing and very entertaining but its not dumbed down or oversimplified. One little knitpicky detail, there are passages in French without translations in the text or in footnotes. I can read French but in this day and age I don't think its fair to assume that all readers - even all readers of an 18th century history - will be able to do so. Still, that's knitpicking. Highly recommended.

"George III: America's Last King" (Yale University Press, 448 pages, $35) adds much to our knowledge of the monarch and his reign. I was intrigued to learn about George's reading and how much writing he produced. He was an earnest, if not very subtle thinker. The word often applied to him is stolid. The biographer's research is impressive, but I'd recommend that you clear your calendar and wear a pair of noise-canceling headphones whilst (as the Brits say) you attempt to decipher Jeremy Black's prose.

There is a reason why some biographies are called "academic." In Chapter 19, "Reputation and Comparisons," Mr. Black states:

The British monarchy, or the image of the monarchy, was reconstructed during the later years of George's reign. The strong patriotism of the war with France, and the king's less conspicuous role in day-to-day politics, combined fruitfully to facilitate the celebration less of the reality and more of the symbol of monarchy. In this, the precondition of the creation of a popular monarchy was (ironically but significantly) the perceived decline in the crown's political authority in a partisan sense, at least its use thus in a clear and frequent fashion.

When I got as far as "in this," my eyes began to cross and the question of what to plant in my spring garden suddenly seemed of paramount concern.

Is there any excuse for such writing? Do monarchy wonks thrive on it? The first two sentences quoted above, with their needless repetitions and plethora of prepositions are illustrative of the ponderous locutions that thud throughout this biography. Translation: As soon as George III stopped meddling in everyday politics the monarchy as a symbolic institution began to thrive. By doing less, George actually enhanced the authority of the monarchy, even though it seemed to partisans that he had weakened it. What more needs saying? Did I miss something?

It is with considerable relief that I turned to Stella Tillyard's "A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings" (Random House, 384 pages, $26.95). The title may suggest that this book is historylite, but not a bit of it. In a delightful introduction, Ms. Tillyard describes how together with her assistant she conducted painstaking research in the Hanoverian archives, plowing through towering piles of metal boxes: "Across the faces of other researchers, as we passed, flitted expressions that mixed polite astonishment with just a hint of disdain."

In Hanover, the court kept records of everything: When George II had his son inoculated for smallpox in 1724, "His English doctor wrote a daily report on his condition, recording the prince's mood and temperature and the number of spots on his skin." I can imagine the comic figure Ms. Tillyard cut among her fellow researchers: Was she really going to sift through all this detritus, and to what end?

Already sympathetic to this scholar dredging through the past, I quickly grasped that a certain level of detail was essential to craft a narrative as compelling and colorful as that of a novel. But this is hardly all that Ms. Tillyard accomplishes. She is writing a group biography with George III at its center, and she shows that his overwhelming sense of responsibility for his siblings — most of whom had nothing much to do — is of a piece with his politics, in which the erring American colonists, for example, had to be brought into line in the same way a father disciplines his children or an older brother reads the riot act to the younguns.

George III took himself very seriously as the father of his nation, the one figure who could rise above factions and self-serving institutions to represent and guide his people. But as one court observer noted, it was all very well if George III was on the side of right, but what if he mistook wrong for right? To whom does one appeal a father's decisions? Curiously, George III (sometimes accused of being a closet Jacobite!) came near to believing he ruled by divine right.

By describing and assessing how the king dealt with his own family, Ms. Tillyard also makes her contribution to the genre of biography:

Biography tends to be a vertical genre, going from parents to children, explaining its subjects by virtue of their childhoods and their relationships with their mothers and fathers. It rarely dwells for very long on brothers and sisters and the importance they can have in one another's lives. Perhaps because I am from a large family myself, my work had tended to go the other way, to be horizontal, seeking in the tangled web of brotherly and sisterly relations other clues to what makes us who we are.

Has a biographer ever so elegantly conjoined in a compact paragraph the nature of biography, her research interests, and her own biography with the reader's interests?

George III had one sister, Caroline Mathilde, who married a mad Danish king and suffered the horrible consequences of an affair with a radical young court doctor. George III's brothers led scandalous, dissolute lives on the royal dole. And yet he refused to give up on this family, just as he would not relinquish his claim on the American colonies. To do so would strike at the heart of his paternal values.

George III's father, Prince Frederick, who died in his 30s (making his son George next in line to Frederick's father, George II), had suffered the neglect of both mother and father and thus decided that the future George III ("a serious boy," Ms. Tillyard calls him) would know what it meant to have a warm heart and would come to regard loving family relations as the basis for a ruler's values. Frederick, in fact, left specific instructions for his son, emphasizing: "Tis not out of vanity that I write this; it is out of love to You, and to the public. It is for your good, and for that of my family, and of the good people you are to govern, that I leave this to you."

To speak of love and family and the nation, combining in such a tender way the personal and the political, surely marks a new development in British history. The monarch as person and symbol fused. But at what cost to George III, Ms. Tillyard shows. The burden of representing and unifying the British world was too much for one man — any man — who could no more keep his empire together than he could make peace among his own family.

This is the second disappointing novel written by a historian that I've read in the past (the first being by Alison Weir). While Weir's novel suffered from trying too hard to produce what she apparently thinks readers of historical fiction enjoy: melodrama, sappy romance, a hyperbolic style, impossible plot twists, and gratuitous sex scenes that were so bad they made me either laugh or go "Ick!" If I had to choose between them, I'd choose Tillyard, desite this novel's flaws.

It took me a long, long time to finish this one; it just never really captured my interest, and I found myself putting it aside for long periods to get on with more enjoyable books. Tillyard's setting, the Peninsular War, was something about which I knew little, and it was interesting, for the most part. But as others have said, Tillyard could never quite put the historian aside. The result was that every fact added to an already huge cast of characters and yet another subplot. If it had kept my interest, I might have been fine with that; but instead, I felt a bit lost whenever I returned to the book. In addition, as others have mentioned, the tone was a bit offputting. It wasn't that she tried to imitate the style of the period or of the aristocracy, but there was an academic undertone that she apparently could not shake.

I did like her portrait of high society and the character of Lady Wellington, and I learned something about an unfamiliar period; but I have to say that I was much relieved to come to the end of Tides of War. Would I give Tillyard a second chance at fiction? Yes. Hopefully she will have learned something about novel writing from her first effort and will put her historical knowledge to better, more restrained use in her second.

Tides of War is the first fictional book by historian Stella Tillyard. Told from a multitude of viewpoints, this book focuses on the battlefront and home front of the Peninsular War during the early 1800's.

Tillyard mixes a cast of fictional and real-life characters to tell her story. The novel opens shortly before the British Army sends their forces to Spain to battle Napoleon's invading armies. Captain James Raven is newly married to Harriet, and this campaign will be a test to their young marriage. Meanwhile, General Wellington sees this as the opportunity of a lifetime - a chance to emerge as one of the best British generals of all time. His wife, Kitty, is no weeping Army wife. In fact, she is glad to be rid of her husband and his philandering ways.

As you would expect from a historian, the story was very much a lesson in history. Tillyard examines all aspects and effects of the war, from military battles to the financial nuisances of supporting a war chest. The Peninsular War, though taught to me years ago, were unfamiliar reading ground, and I enjoyed learning through Tillyard's research.

Can historians write good fiction? I think so, but it takes some practice. And practice is what I think Tillyard needs to be a great writer of historical fiction. Tides of War had too many side stories and themes. Here are just a few:

• The military aspects of the Peninsular War


• The social effects of war on the home front


• The strife between democratic government and monarchies


• Women's rights during early 19th century England


• Marriage and adultery


• Industrial effects on the worker


• The rise of credit in international finance


• The invention of gas-powered street lamps


• The investigation of the medical use of blood transfusions


• The art of Francisco Goya

Too much! To achieve all these themes, Tillyard invented a cast of dozens and devised t00 many subplots. I hope in her next book she can simplify her storytelling.

Tides of War, overall, was an interesting read if you love historical fiction. Long listed for this year's Orange Prize, I tip my hat to Stella Tillyard, the historian, and hope she continues to refine her craft as a fictional writer.

Fabulously illustrated - a real, meaty coffee-table book! Here are the stories of the four beautiful Lennox sisters - Caroline who married Henry Fox, Lord Holland; Emily, who married James Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare and Duke of Leinster and secondly, for love, William Ogilvie: Louisa who marrid Tom Conolly the wealthiest commoner in Ireland; and last but not least the lovely Sarah Lennox, almost Queen of England to George III ... but marrying Sir Charles Bunbury to save face and honour, and - after a series of affairs, bearing an illegitimate child, and culminating in divorce - she then married George Napier the dashing and handsome career soldier several years her junior.

The sisters lived through tumultuous times. They were close to the Court and were witness to the terrors of the French Revolution and Jacobite rising ... acting as hostesses to the great and good of England and Ireland, their lives were central to the political upheavals of the late C18.

Stella Tillyard gives us an insight into the lives of the sisters, their families, their lovers and friends. Drawing on material from a great family archive and personal letters she offers us a portrait of the daily detail of country and town life; of the houses, furiture and gardens which the sisters oversaw, bought and commissioned. The world of the Aristocrats is grandly displayed here in this sumptiously illustrated and excellently written book.