num_pages: 496
description: Three sisters  beautiful cultured and aristocratic born into immense wealth during the reign of Queen Victoria. Their dramatic lives are here unfolded in a rich historical biography certain to appeal to fans of Downton Abbey Georgiana and Stella Tillyards Aristocrats.Mary Madeline and Pamela  the three Wyndham sisters  were painted by John Singer Sargent in 1899. For The Times it was quite simply the greatest picture of modern times. But these beautiful fin de siecle gentlewomen came to epitomize a vanished world. The languor of their pose reflects the leisured gilded existence of the late Victorian aristocracy that was to be dealt a deathblow by the First World War.Yet the lives of these three Wyndham sisters were far more turbulent than their air of calm suggests. Brought up in artistic circles their childhood was liberal and romantic. Their parents were intimate friends with the Pre-Raphaelites and the girls grew to become leaders of the aesthetic movement. Bowing to convention they made excellent marriages but found emotional support from others  Mary with Arthur Balfour and the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; Pamela with Liberal statesman and ornithologist Edward Grey. Their liaisons shocked society while the First World War devastated their way of life.Those Wild Wyndhams is their first ever biography and is based on the many letters they have left behind  compelling humorous and brilliantly illuminating. This sparkling debut by Claudia Renton captures them and their age in an unforgettable piece of historical and political biography.
language: English
title: Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power
publisher: William Collins