The Mistresses of Cliveden

The Mistresses of Cliveden

Author: Natalie Livingstone

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 0099594722

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A Sunday Times bestseller - Five women. One house. One extraordinary history. From its construction in the 1660s to its heyday in the 1960s, Cliveden played host to a dynasty of remarkable and powerful women. Anna Maria, Elizabeth, Augusta, Harriet, and Nancy were five ladies who, over the course of three centuries, shaped British society through their beauty, personalities, and political influence. Restoration and revolution, aristocratic rise and fall, world war and cold war form the extraordinary backdrop against which their stories unfold. An addictive history of the period and an intimate exploration of the timeless relationships between people and place, The Mistresses of Cliveden is a story of sex, power and politics, and the ways in which exceptional women defy the expectations of their time.


The Women of Rothschild

The Women of Rothschild

Author: Natalie Livingstone

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2022-10-25

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 1250280206

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In The Women of Rothschild, Natalie Livingstone reveals the role of women in shaping the legacy of the famous Rothschild dynasty, synonymous with wealth and power. From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first. As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the family bank, they forged their own distinct dynasty of daughters and nieces, mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform, and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and idealists, performers and introverts, they mixed with everyone from Queen Victoria to Chaim Weizmann, Rossini to Isaiah Berlin, and the Duke of Wellington to Alec Guinness, as well as with amphetamine-dealers, suffragists and avant-garde artists. Rothschild women helped bring down ghetto walls in early nineteenth-century Frankfurt, inspired some of the most remarkable cultural movements of the Victorian period, and in the mid-twentieth century burst into America, where they patronized Thelonious Monk and drag-raced through Manhattan with Miles Davis. Absorbing and compulsive, The Women of Rothschild gives voice to the complicated, privileged, and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history.


Fall of Poppies

Fall of Poppies

Author: Heather Webb

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0062418564

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Top voices in historical fiction deliver an unforgettable collection of short stories set in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month... November 11, 1918. After four long, dark years of fighting, the Great War ends at last, and the world is forever changed. For soldiers, loved ones, and survivors the years ahead stretch with new promise, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost. As families come back together, lovers reunite, and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell. In this moving anthology, nine authors share stories of love, strength, and renewal as hope takes root in a fall of poppies. Featuring: Jessica Brockmole Hazel Gaynor Evangeline Holland Marci Jefferson Kate Kerrigan Jennifer Robson Beatriz Williams Lauren Willig Heather Webb


The Duchess Countess

The Duchess Countess

Author: Catherine Ostler

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1471172570

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'A scintillating story superbly told... [Ostler] packs every paragraph with eye-opening detail' The Times 'A rollicking read... [Ostler] tells Elizabeth's story with admirable style and gusto' Sunday Times 'Terrifically entertaining: if you liked Bridgerton, you’ll love this...and her research is impeccable' Evening Standard 'Fascinating. Magnificent.​ Sensitively told' Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five 'Catherine Ostler’s superb, gripping, decadent biography brings an extraordinary woman and a whole world blazingly to life' Simon Sebag Montefiore When the glamorous Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, Countess of Bristol, went on trial at Westminster Hall for bigamy in April 1776, the story drew more attention in society than the American War of Independence. A clandestine, candlelit wedding to the young heir to an earldom, a second marriage to a Duke, a lust for diamonds and an electrifying appearance at a masquerade ball in a diaphanous dress: no wonder the trial was a sensation. However, Elizabeth refused to submit to public humiliation and retire quietly. Rather than backing gracefully out of the limelight, she embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe, being welcomed by the Pope and Catherine the Great among others. As maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth led her life in the inner circle of the Hanoverian court and her exploits delighted and scandalised the press and the people. She made headlines, and was a constant feature in penny prints and gossip columns. Writers were intrigued by her. Thackeray drew on Elizabeth as inspiration for his calculating, alluring Becky Sharp. But her behaviour, often depicted as attention-seeking and manipulative, hid a more complex tale – that of Elizabeth’s fight to overcome personal tragedy and loss. Now, in this brilliantly told and evocative biography, Catherine Ostler takes a fresh look at Elizabeth’s story and seeks to understand and reappraise a woman who refused to be defined by society’s expectations of her. A woman who was by turns, brave, loving and generous but also reckless, greedy and insecure; a woman totally unwilling to accept the female status of underdog or to hand over all the power, the glory and the adventures of life to men.


The Lady's Maid

The Lady's Maid

Author: Rosina Harrison

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0091943515

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"In 1929, Yorkshire lass Rosina Harrison became personal maid to Lady Astor: the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat and wife of one of England's wealthiest lords. Lady Astor was brilliant yet tempestuous, but outspoken Rose gave as good as she got. For 35 years, the battle of wills and wits raged between the two women, until an unlikely friendship began to emerge. "The Lady's Maid" is a captivating insight into the great wealth 'upstairs' but also the endless work 'downstairs', but it is Rose's unique relationship with Lady Astor that makes this book a truly enticing read"--Publisher's description.


Cliveden

Cliveden

Author: James Crathorne

Publisher: Trafalgar Square Publishing

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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Historisch overzicht van het Engels buitenverblijf en zijn bewoners.


Isabella

Isabella

Author: Kirstin Downey

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0307742164

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An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history. In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twenty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and a mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and León. Her subsequent feats were legendary. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing North African invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea. She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She sponsored Columbus’s trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain’s reputation for centuries. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella’s influence. Using new scholarship, Downey’s luminous biography tells the story of this brilliant, fervent, forgotten woman, the faith that propelled her through life, and the land of ancient conflicts and intrigue she brought under her command.


The Long Weekend

The Long Weekend

Author: Adrian Tinniswood

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2016-06-02

Total Pages: 590

ISBN-13: 1448191246

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'A masterpiece of social history' Daily Mail There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world and shows how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.


ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD

Author: Elie Wiesel

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2013-04-10

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0307833038

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On Yom Kippur eve in 1965, Elie Wiesel found himself in Russia, “in a synagogue crowded with people. The air was stifling. The cantor was chanting . . . Suddenly a mad thought crossed my mind: Something is about to happen; any moment now the Rabbi will wake up, shake himself, pound the pulpit and cry out, shout his pain, his rage, his truth. I felt the tension building up inside me; the wait became unbearable. But nothing happened . . . It was too late. The Rabbi no longer had the strength to imagine himself free.” In Zalmen, or The Madness of God, Wiesel gives his Rabbi that strength, the courage to voice his oppression and isolation, and the result is a passionate cry. This play illuminates not only the plight of the Soviet Jew, but the anguish of individuals everywhere who must survive—and yet long for something more than mere survival. (Adapted for the stage by Marion Wiesel.)


When the Astors Owned New York

When the Astors Owned New York

Author: Justin Kaplan

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2006-06-01

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1101218819

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In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age. Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior. Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure