Book description
Born in 1867 and orphaned at three, Ettie Fane was brought up by a
beloved grandmother and then two adoring, almost incestuous, bachelor
uncles. At twenty she married Willy Grenfell, later Lord Desborough.
Beautiful, rich, charming and clever, Ettie soon became a leading
hostess at the two magnificent country houses she had inherited. Leading
politicians, writers and artists were very much part of her circle.
But there was a dark side too, as this book will reveal. Ettie could be
manipulative and cruel. Her eldest son Julian, after a nervous breakdown
at Oxford, rejected her world and values. Nemesis and tragedy were not
far away. In 1915 Julian died of war wounds. Six weeks later her second
son Billy was killed in action. Her youngest son Ivo would be killed
shortly after the war. But despite intense private misery, she reacted
with outward courage and self-mastery. Grief revealed the greatness of
her spirit. In the 1920s and 1930s she continued to collect new types,
especially gifted young men, relishing people of all ages up to her
death in 1952, a redoutable survivor from a vanished age. Richard
Davenport-Hines was born in 1953. A Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature and the Royal Historical Society, he is a past winner of the
WOLFSON PRIZE for History and Biography. He has most recently edited
Hugh Trevor-Roper's LETTERS FROM OXFORD for publication in July 2006. He
lives in London.
