Joanne Major

Went off on a bit of a biographical tangent with this one, after reading about Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland, the French actress/dancer/opera singer wife of the Duke of Wellington's older brother, Richard Wellesley. (My fiction-centric brain immediately wondered if Hyacinthe had inspired Baroness Orczy in her creation of Marguerite St Just!) As there isn't a dedicated biography about the Wellesleys, I found this family history of the Cavendish Bentinck family at the library, which covers Hyacinthe's disastrous marriage to Wellesley, and also the elopement of her married daughter Anne with Charles Cavendish Bentinck and the love match of Anne's son Charles with a Romany gypsy bride named Sinnetta. (I think! A family tree would have been super helpful.) Charles remarried and his granddaughter was Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the Queen Mother.

I did find the whole saga very interesting, despite the barrage of family connections and titles in the first few chapters, and the authors' fanciful habit of 'perhapsing' their way through history. From French actresses to Gypsy brides via the Prince Regent's love child, sometimes fact is livelier than fiction!

The cover art is horrendous, however - what does a consumptive young girl feeling her glands have to do with a matrimonial romp through one family's history?… (meer)