Aristocrats: The Illustrated Companion
by By Tillyard, Stella
Category: History , Europe , Great Britain

When Lady Caroline Lennox ran away with the ambitious politician Henry Fox in 1744 she could have had no idea that the elopement marked the beginning of a family drama in which, for the next fifty years, she and her three sisters Emily, Louisa, and Sarah tried to achieve happiness in an often hostile world. Mistresses of some of the grandest houses in England and Ireland - Holland House, Leinster House, Carton and Castletown - their lives were splendidly magnificent. They left behind not just a vast written archive, but the portraits, furniture, houses and gardens that they had commissioned, bought and created. This volume, which accompanies the TV drama series, not only portrays their treasure trove of houses, objects and paintings but also uses stills taken on location to show the actors in their settings and costumes. In her text Stella Tillyard uses new material from the sisters' letters to take us deep into their opinions, tastes and habits and to describe how and where they bought their furniture and found their gardeners and how they filled their days in country and in town.