The Duchess Book

A tale of decadence and excess great houses and wild parties love and sexual intrigue this biography of Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire casts an astonishing new light on the nobility of eighteenth-century England. Fashionable extravagant and universally adored Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire was one of the most influential women of her day. But her flamboyant public persona hid a multitude of personal troubles: drug addiction vast gambling debts an unhappy menage a trois with her husband and best friend and a doomed affair with the future prime minister. Like her descendant Diana Princess of Wales Georgiana was a vulnerable woman living the life of an icon. This utterly absorbing biography recently made into a major film starring Keira Knightley as the Duchess of Devonshire paints a touching portrait of a misunderstood woman.

Beautiful, glamorous and charismatic, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was an icon of her age; she was also a compulsive gambler, an influential political operator, a drug addict, a doting mother and an adulteress.In a world of decadence and...