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. ( )