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The Bolter: Idina Sackville - The woman who scandalised 1920s Society and became White Mischief's infamous seductress: Idina Sackville - the 1920’s ... to have inspired Taylor Swift’s The Bolter Paperback – 29 Dec. 2008
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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.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVirago
- Publication date29 Dec. 2008
- Dimensions20 x 2.3 x 13 cm
- ISBN-101844084809
- ISBN-13978-1844084807
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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
A corker of a subject. Idina's behaviour... probably inspired The Bolter in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. Osborne's richly wrought descriptions of glittering Paris nights and lush mountainous landscapes of Kenya's Happy Valley are fabulous... A breakneck-paced, thoroughly diverting story -- Valerie Grove ― The Times
Rich, title, witty, beguiling, Lady Idina Sackville had all the gifts, except, perhaps, judgement. Frances Osborne has written an enthralling account of a dazzling, troubled, life ― Julian Fellowes
Truly interesting. Osborne paints an enthralling portrait of upper-class English life just before, during and immediately after the Great War. Frivolous, rich, sexy, [and] achingly fashionable -- Robert McCrum ― Observer
Osborne is an imaginative scene painter... Idina wasn't admirable, but Osborne makes us sympathise with her -- Marianne Brace ― Independent
An engaging book and a definitive final look back at those naughty people who, between the wars, took their bad behaviour off to Kenya and whose upper-class delinquency became gilded with unjustified glamour -- Alexandra Fuller ― Financial Times
Osborne is a graceful writer, excellent at evoking the atmosphere of London during the First World War and Happy Valley in the Twenties. Her judgement is pitch-perfect, never letting Idina off the hook but at the same time sympathetic towards her, and she skilfully captures the myriad twists and turns of a turbulent life ― Daily Express
The Bolter is a biographical treat ― Good Housekeeping
A bewitching character brilliantly painted ― Easy Living
A superb portrait of an astonishing woman and her times ― Waterstone's Books Quarterly
Frances Osborne has produced a racy romp underpinned by some impressive research. She understands the period and the world she describes -- Selina Hastings ― Sunday Telegraph
A wonderfully engaging book which combines the tingling immediacy of the best kind of history with the stay-up-till-3am-to-finish-it urgency of a bestseller -- Allison Pearson ― Daily Mail
Osborne unearthed the moving truth behind the headlines. It's a melancholy, vivid portrait of a lost lady and her troubled world ― Marie Claire
Osborne has had, as you would expect a family member, unprecedented access to Sackville's diaries - and those of most of her husbands ― Scotland on Sunday
A vivid portrait of her scandalous ancestor and her relationships with family members, while conjuring a vanished world with novelistic detail and flair -- Michiko Kakutani ― New York Times
Osborne has written an engaging book, drawing a revealing portrait of a remarkable woman and adding humanity to her 'scandalous' life... And what a life it was ― Wall Street Journal
Fascinating... beautifully written... Frances Osborne brings the decadence of Britain's dying aristocracy vividly to life in this story of scandal and heartbreak ― Simon Sebag Montefiore
A rumbustious and harrowing biography that takes us from London to Newport to Kenya... A feast for the Anglophile ― New York Times Book Review
[Idina Sackville's] life story, speckled with the names of the rich and famous, is a miniature history lesson, bringing into sharp focus both world wars, the Jazz Age, and the colonization of Kenya. . . . Sackville's passion lights up the page ― Entertainment Weekly
Osborne's lively narrative brings Lady Idina Sackville boldly to life. . . the text, most lyrical when describing the landscapes around Idina's African residences, proves than an adventurous spirit continues to run in this fascinating family ― Publishers Weekly, starred review
If notorious relatives make for the best dinner-party anecdotes, then Frances Osborne should be able to dine out for decades.... Enthralling ― Plain Dealer
The Bolter is the real Idina's story told by her great-grand-daughter Frances Osborne. It whirls the reader through the London social scene during the First World War and the decadence of Kenya's Happy Valley via Idina's five marriages and innumerable love affairs. I loved it. ― Alice O’Keeffe, Amazon
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
Rich, title, witty, beguiling, Lady Idina Sackville had all the gifts, except, perhaps, judgement. Frances Osborne has written an enthralling account of a dazzling, troubled, life. ― Julian Fellowes
** 'On the literary pages, the wife of current shadow chancellor George Osborne, Frances, stepped into the limelight, as her new book, The Bolter, attracted the most reviews ― THE BOOKSELLER
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Product details
- Publisher : Virago; Reprint edition (29 Dec. 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1844084809
- ISBN-13 : 978-1844084807
- Dimensions : 20 x 2.3 x 13 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 156,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,361 in Biographies on Novelist & Playwrights
- 3,506 in Women's Biographies
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We found the permissive Edwardian society absolutely astounding - affairs among the gentry were rife! In fact they seem to have been almost the norm and the general behaviour was shocking even to us broad minded modern women!. Idina certainly wasn't the worst.
At the beginning of the book it is easy to be judgemental about Idina, and the decisions she made, but as the story unfolds it is clear just how unselfish she was. We loved that Frances Osbourn made no judgement - she simply tells the story as it was and wasn't tempted to sensationalise. The afterword is an independent verification of all that Frances tells.
We found the footnotes through the book of no help at all but the family tree at the front of the book was frequently flicked back to by most of us.
Despite her self indulgences I grew to love Idina Sackville as I followed her glamorous and complicated life - even though these complications were generally of her own decision-making.
A wonderful and intriguing story told by a wonderful biographer who, despite being a direct descendant of Idina's, did not make any attempt to show only the good.
Best read for a long time!!
In hindsight, it is easy to see where, and how, things go wrong. This divorce was shocking at a time when marriages between members of the aristocracy had different boundaries. Affairs were commonplace, but divorce was not. When Idina walked away from her marriage she had to leave behind her two sons. What follows are the stories of four more marriages. Charles Gordon, Josslyn Hay (infamously murdered in Kenya), Donald Haldeman and Vincent Soltan. Gossip surrounded Idina, with rumours of scandalous behaviour at the beautiful homes she created in Kenya. Much of what happened seems shocking, even today, with you feeling pity - not only for Idina herself, who seemed to need somebody to cling to in order to prove her attraction - but also for her children. This is a moving, and often tragic, account of a life - however, it was certainly a life lived to the full. Lastly, I read the kindle version of this book and it contained no illustrations.
Sackville and her exciting and tragic life..her scandalous reputation remains intact but with it a very fair and we'll researched account of what led her to leave her philandering husbands. Through recommend this.
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It would have been nice to compare their lives with that of a pitworker from one of the Scottish coalmines, from which Euan Wallace derived his fortune. And a look at the overcrowded slum tenements which were good enough for the miner's families.
Naturally Euan Wallace became later a Tory politician to see to it that nothing changed and the pitworkers knew their places.
And the author herself is probably one of the best examples of the self-perpetuating power of the British upper-crust as the granddaughter of fun-loving Idina and the wife of the current British Chancellor of the Exchequer. They stand for nothing but the conservation and extension of their endless privileges and feeding the crumbs of their wealth to the plebs. And the plebs likes it that way because they are perfectly dumbed-down and brain-washed by the media of the likes of Rupert Murdoch. Carry on!
Beginning with Idina's earliest background, the author, Idina's great-granddaughter, explores the family history. Idina's father, Gilbert Sackville, the 8th Earl of De La Warr, possessed an eight hundred-year-old title but very little income. Her mother, Muriel Brassey, was the non-aristocratic granddaughter of an unbelievably successful man of trade. After a few years of marriage, when Muriel tired of paying for her husband's indiscretions, however, she shocked society by suing for divorce, almost unheard of among the aristocracy. This, combined with her involvement in socialist causes and the suffrage movement further alienated her from "polite" society and tainted the futures of her children. The author believes that this had a major impact on the future course of Idina's life.
Marriages among the aristocracy were frequently marriages of convenience, allowing both husbands and wives to take lovers, often from among their married friends. Married lovers, unlike lovers who were single, did not expect to divorce their spouses to marry their lovers, thereby preserving everyone's family assets - and if a pregnancy resulted, the child could be incorporated into the woman's already existing family. When Idina eventually met and married a wealthy, and titled, young Calvary officer, David Euan Wallace, as much of a party animal as she was, World War I intervened. Eventually, she divorced him to escape to Kenya with someone else, forced to leave her two young sons behind, though she claimed to her dying day that she loved Euan. Eventually, she would have four more marriages and divorces and would become the "undisputed Queen of Happy Valley" in Kenya, her bed referred to as "the battleground."
A fascinating sociological study of the mores of aristocratic England and a personal study of Idina Sackville, who was both its victim and its most celebrated example, The Bolter will fascinate those interested in this period and in the unstated rules of aristocratic life. Most readers will become so involved in the story that they will probably ignore the sometimes awkward descriptions, the simple conclusions, and the possibly incorrect motivations attributed to the characters. The fact that many of these attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and the taking of lovers continues after all these years seems to prove that among the aristocracy, at least, old habits indeed die slowly.