From stately homes and prisons to the House of Lords and Edwardian asylums--the stories, spanning the 20th century, of the disintegrating fortunes of three of Britain's most illustrious aristocratic dynasties and the scapegraces responsible Splendour & Squalor traces the disintegration of three aristocratic dynasties through the twentieth century: families who seemingly had everything yet decided to take 'the down-escalator of life.' They include the Montagus, Dukes of Manchester, who had once employed Vanburgh--creator of Blenheim Palace, Churchill's birthplace--to remodel their principal family seat, Kimbolton Cast≤ shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the  Montagus oversaw further renovation--converting the Kimbolton chapel into a bar, and stocking it with glasses decorated with 'pornography of the most interesting kind,' for the benefit of guests like the restless, bisexual Duke of Kent, younger brother of George VI. Four consecutive generations of the family went to jail. The Herveys, Marquesses of Bristol, went inside too, although John Bristol (7th Marquess of Bristol, born 1954; died 1999) spent most of his time investing his inheritance in helicopters, heroin, and--for strictly recreational purposes--handcuffs: a blazing quest for self-gratification which led him into the company of Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger. Splendour & Squalor offers a riveting insight into the disintegration of a once seemingly impregnable elite. The resultant portrait is the authentic Downton Abbey--stripped of gloss, mythology and sentiment, and brought mercilessly up-to-date.

From stunning stately homes to the prisons of wartime Britain; from the House of Lords to Edwardian asylums; from the Ritz and the Dorchester to East End pubs, "Splendour and Squalor" tells the stories of four of Britain's most illustrious aristocratic dynasties and of the black sheep who brought them down. They kept monkeys in West End hotels, and rent-boys in Deauville and Kensington. They spiced up life in pre-war Britain by patronizing illegal gaming clubs and staging elaborate five-in-a-bed sex in stately homes. They used firearms with convincing disregard for their own and others' safety and drove their Rollses and Bentleys with apparently suicidal intent. They acquired yachts and helicopters as they shipped the family silver to California and disposed of Old Masters at auction. They married frequently and unsatisfactorily, humiliating their wives and always withholding from them dynastic secrets of schizophrenia and insanity. Lacking the energy and appetite to do so, they rarely developed their talents. Carpeting their lives with deceit, they sought consolation in ferocious expenditure, funding narcotic and alcohol-fueled blow-outs. They ignored the advice of sane relations, shrugged off trustees, and experimented with burglary, shop-lifting, vagrancy and fraud. Their primary, possibly sole, accomplishment was to drag down their families with them. They were the black sheep of aristocracy and this is their story.

They were the black sheep of aristocracy and this is their story. From stately homes to the prisons of wartime Britain; from the House of Lords to Edwardian asylums; from the Ritz and the Dorchester to East End dives, Splendour and Squalor tells the fascinating stories of three of Britain's most illustrious aristocratic dynasties and of the black sheep who brought them down.

From stately homes to the prisons of wartime Britain; from the House of Lords to Edwardian asylums; from the Ritz and the Dorchester to East End pubs, Splendour and Squalor tells the stories of the disintegrating fortunes of three of Britain's most illustrious aristocratic dynasties and the scapegraces responsible...They were the black sheep of aristocracy and this is their story.