Reviewed on Richard & Judy's Book Club 2009 on Wednesday 25 February.

Idina Sackville is the 'exceedingly high spirited' skeleton in Frances Osborne's closet and her life reads better than alot of fiction. Twice divorced before she was 30 and five times before she died might not raise any eybrows now but in the 1920s it was the stuff of scandal. A fascinating and compelling read.

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Synopsis

On Friday 25th May, 1934, a forty-one-year-old woman walked into the lobby of Claridge’s Hotel to meet the nineteen-year-old son whose face she did not know. Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man.

An inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter, painted by William Orpen, and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Sackville went on to divorce a total of five times, yet died with a picture of her first love by her bed. Her struggle to reinvent her life with each new marriage left one husband murdered and branded her the ‘high priestess’ of White Mischief’s bed-hopping Happy Valley in Kenya.

Sackville’s life was so scandalous that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne. Now, Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville’s road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century.

Reviews

'Passionate and headstrong, Lady Idina was determined to be free even if the cost was scandal and ruin. Frances Osborne has brilliantly captured not only one woman's life but an entire lost society' Amanda Foreman

About the Author

Frances Osborne is a former lawyer, stockbroker, and freelance journalist turned full-time writer. She lives in London with her husband, George Osborne, Member of Parliament, and her two young children. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation