American HeiressesUnpublished

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In the tradition of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, an extraordinary Dickensian story of wealth and eccentricity.

This is the real-life story of the Vanderbilt heiress who married the Duke of Marlborough in 1895. It gives a fascinating insight into upstairs-downstairs life and the highest circles of Edwardian aristocracy.

Beautiful, intelligent and wealthy, Ivana Lowell seemed to have it all. Part of the Guinness dynasty, her family were glamorous and well-connected. Her charismatic but spoilt grandmother Maureen had made an excellent marriage with the Lord of Dufferin and Avon and was a leader of the fashionable set...

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...

Heiresses is a glorious book, endlessly entertaining and about much more than its stated subject. Thompson is a fabulous writer' Caroline O'Donoghue 'Witty, insightful, deliciously gossip-laden and slightly scandalous... Heiresses makes for an entertaining, occasionally sad...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A glittering depiction of a woman ahead of her time who absolutely refused to be second best' Red Alva Smith, her Southern family destitute after the Civil War, marries into one of America's...

Brimful of scandal, illicit affairs, spurned loves and unexpected tragedy, The Million Dollar Duchesses reveals the closed-door bargaining which led to these most influential matches and how America's heiresses shook-up British high society for ever.