The Viceroy's Daughters

The Viceroy's Daughters PDF Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1780225741
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
The lives of the three daughters of Lord Curzon: glamorous, rich, independent and wilful. Irene (born 1896), Cynthia (b.1898) and Alexandria (b.1904) were the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India 1898-1905 and probably the grandest and most self-confident imperial servant Britain ever possessed. After the death of his fabulously rich American wife in 1906, Curzon's determination to control every aspect of his daughters' lives, including the money that was rightfully theirs, led them one by one into revolt against their father. The three sisters were at the very heart of the fast and glittering world of the Twenties and Thirties. Irene, intensely musical and a passionate foxhunter, had love affairs in the glamorous Melton Mowbray hunting set. Cynthia ('Cimmie') married Oswald Mosley, joining him first in the Labour Party, where she became a popular MP herself, before following him into fascism. Alexandra ('Baba'), the youngest and most beautiful, married the Prince of Wales's best friend Fruity Metcalfe. On Cimmie's early death in 1933 Baba flung herself into a long and passionate affair with Mosley and a liaison with Mussolini's ambassador to London, Count Dino Grandi, while enjoying the romantic devotion of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. The sisters see British fascism from behind the scenes, and the arrival of Wallis Simpson and the early married life of the Windsors. The war finds them based at 'the Dorch' (the Dorchester Hotel) doing good works. At the end of their extraordinary lives, Irene and Baba have become, rather improbably, pillars of the establishment, Irene being made one of the very first Life Peers in 1958 for her work with youth clubs.

The Viceroy's Daughters

The Viceroy's Daughters PDF Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1780225741
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Get Book Here

Book Description
The lives of the three daughters of Lord Curzon: glamorous, rich, independent and wilful. Irene (born 1896), Cynthia (b.1898) and Alexandria (b.1904) were the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India 1898-1905 and probably the grandest and most self-confident imperial servant Britain ever possessed. After the death of his fabulously rich American wife in 1906, Curzon's determination to control every aspect of his daughters' lives, including the money that was rightfully theirs, led them one by one into revolt against their father. The three sisters were at the very heart of the fast and glittering world of the Twenties and Thirties. Irene, intensely musical and a passionate foxhunter, had love affairs in the glamorous Melton Mowbray hunting set. Cynthia ('Cimmie') married Oswald Mosley, joining him first in the Labour Party, where she became a popular MP herself, before following him into fascism. Alexandra ('Baba'), the youngest and most beautiful, married the Prince of Wales's best friend Fruity Metcalfe. On Cimmie's early death in 1933 Baba flung herself into a long and passionate affair with Mosley and a liaison with Mussolini's ambassador to London, Count Dino Grandi, while enjoying the romantic devotion of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. The sisters see British fascism from behind the scenes, and the arrival of Wallis Simpson and the early married life of the Windsors. The war finds them based at 'the Dorch' (the Dorchester Hotel) doing good works. At the end of their extraordinary lives, Irene and Baba have become, rather improbably, pillars of the establishment, Irene being made one of the very first Life Peers in 1958 for her work with youth clubs.

The Viceroy's Daughters

The Viceroy's Daughters PDF Author: Anne De Courcy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780857573827
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Viceroy of Ouidah

The Viceroy of Ouidah PDF Author: Bruce Chatwin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101503211
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description
Bruce Chatwin’s debut novel: “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness seen through a microscope” (The Atlantic) In this vivid, powerful novel, Chatwin tells of Francisco Manoel de Silva, a poor Brazilian adventurer who sails to Dahomey in West Africa to trade for slaves and amass his fortune. His plans exceed his dreams, and soon he is the Viceroy of Ouidah, master of all slave trading in Dahomey. But the ghastly business of slave trading and the open savagery of life in Dahomey slowly consume Manoel's wealth and sanity.

Diana Mosley

Diana Mosley PDF Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062381679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
Diana Mosley was a society beauty who fell from grace when she left her husband, brewery heir Bryan Guinness, for Sir Oswald Mosley, an admirer of Mussolini and a notorious womanizer. This horrified her family and scandalized society. In 1933, Diana met the new German leader, Adolf Hitler. They became close friends and he attended her wedding as the guest of honor. During the war, the Mosleys' association with Hitler led them to be arrested and interned for three and a half years. Diana's relationships with Hitler and Mosley defined her life in the public eye and marked her as a woman who possessed a singular lack of empathy for those less blessed at birth. Anne de Courcy's revealing biography chronicles one of the most intriguing, controversial women of the twentieth century. It is a riveting tell-all memoir of a leading society hostess, a woman with intimate access to the highest literary, political, and social circles of her time. Written with Mosley's exclusive cooperation and based upon hundreds of hours of taped interviews and unprecedented access to her private papers, letters, and diaries, Lady Mosley's only stipulation was that the book not be published until after her death.

Daughter of Empire

Daughter of Empire PDF Author: Pamela Hicks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476733821
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A memoir of a singular childhood in England and India by the daughter of Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten. Pamela Mountbatten entered a remarkable family when she was born in 1929. As the younger daughter of a glamorous heiress and a British earl, Pamela spent much of her early life with her sister, nannies, and servants-- and a menagerie that included, at different times, a bear, two wallabies, a mongoose, and a lion. Her parents each had lovers who lived openly with the family. The house was full of guests like Sir Winston Churchill, Noël Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Duchess of Windsor. When World War II broke out, Pamela and her sister were sent to live in New York City with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1947, her father was appointed to oversee the independence of India. Amid the turmoil, Pamela worked with student leaders, developed warm friendships with Gandhi and Nehru, and witnessed both the joy of Independence Day and its terrible aftermath. Soon afterwards, she was a bridesmaid in Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Philip, and was at the young princess's side when she learned her father had died and she was queen. This witty, intimate memoir is an enchanting lens through which to view the early part of the twentieth century--From publisher description.

Curzon

Curzon PDF Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466829990
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1001

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Book Description
"A Superb New Biography . . . A Tragic Story, Brilliantly Told." —Andrew Roberts, Literary Review George Nathaniel Curzon's controversial life in public service stretched from the high noon of his country's empire to the traumatized years following World War I. As viceroy of India under Queen Victoria and foreign secretary under King George V, the obsessive Lord Curzon left his unmistakable mark on the era. David Gilmour's award-winning book—with a new foreword by the author—is a brilliant assessment of Curzon's character and achievements, offering a richly dramatic account of the infamous long vendettas, the turbulent friendships, and the passionate, risky love affairs that complicated and enriched his life. Born into the ruling class of what was then the world's greatest power, Curzon was a fervent believer in British imperialism who spent his life proving he was fit for the task. Often seen as arrogant and tempestuous, he was loathed as much as he was adored, his work disparaged as much as it was admired. In Gilmour's well-rounded appraisal, Curzon emerges as a complex, tragic figure, a gifted leader who saw his imperial world overshadowed at the dawn of democracy.

The Fishing Fleet

The Fishing Fleet PDF Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 0297863835
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The adventurous young women who sailed to India during the Raj in search of husbands. From the late 19th century, when the Raj was at its height, many of Britain's best and brightest young men went out to India to work as administrators, soldiers and businessmen. With the advent of steam travel and the opening of the Suez Canal, countless young women, suffering at the lack of eligible men in Britain, followed in their wake. This amorphous band was composed of daughters returning after their English education, girls invited to stay with married sisters or friends, and yet others whose declared or undeclared goal was simply to find a husband. They were known as the Fishing Fleet, and this book is their story, hitherto untold. For these young women, often away from home for the first time, one thing they could be sure of was a rollicking good time. By the early 20th century, a hectic social scene was in place, with dances, parties, amateur theatricals, picnics, tennis tournaments, cinemas and gymkhanas, with perhaps a tiger shoot and a glittering dinner at a raja's palace thrown in. And, with men outnumbering women by roughly four to one, romances were conducted at alarming speed and marriages were frequent. But after the honeymoon, life often changed dramatically: whisked off to a remote outpost with few other Europeans for company, and where constant vigilance was required to guard against disease, they found it a far cry from the social whirlwind of their first arrival. Anne de Courcy's sparkling narrative is enriched by a wealth of first-hand sources - unpublished memoirs, letters and diaries rescued from attics - which bring this forgotten era vividly to life.

The Husband Hunters

The Husband Hunters PDF Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250164613
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American heiresses who married into the impoverished British aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century – the real women who inspired Downton Abbey Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age. Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them.

Debs at War

Debs at War PDF Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 178022575X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
An extraordinary account - from firsthand sources - of upper class women and the active part they took in the War Pre-war debutantes were members of the most protected, not to say isolated, stratum of 20th-century society: the young (17-20) unmarried daughters of the British upper classes. For most of them, the war changed all that for ever. It meant independence and the shock of the new, and daily exposure to customs and attitudes that must have seemed completely alien to them. For many, the almost military regime of an upper class childhood meant they were well suited for the no-nonsense approach needed in wartime. This book records the extraordinary diversity of challenges, shocks and responsibilities they faced - as chauffeurs, couriers, ambulance-drivers, nurses, pilots, spies, decoders, factory workers, farmers, land girls, as well as in the Women's Services. How much did class barriers really come down? Did they stick with their own sort? And what about fun and love in wartime - did love cross the class barriers?

The Viceroy Villa

The Viceroy Villa PDF Author: Ashwini Nambiar U
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789354461484
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Synopsis The viceroy villa This is a mystery story which revolves around a cursed palace - the viceroy villa. Avantika and Akash along with their daughters Sneha and Shruti move in to stay in the villa. Avantika discovers an underground dungeon in their premises and is motivated to write a story based on it. Strangely whatever she pens down tends to become a reality. The dangers and challenges that she plans for the characters in the story becomes a threat in real for her daughters. Kids along with their friends get kidnapped. However they find an escape route which lands them in an island inhabited by a deadly tribe. The kids come to know of the tribe's glorious past and their roots to the viceroy villa. Befriending them, kids get to learn a whole new way of life - the natural way! The island, unknown to the world, is a world in itself. In the end dad finally succeeds in tracing the island and reaching the kids.