This is the true story of one woman's life set against the backcloth of the great events of the first half of the twentieth century. Its subject, the Hon Venetia Stanley was remarkable for what she was, what she did and the people she knew. So it is a tale that embraces politics, sex, scandal, love and betrayal, the English aristocracy, the Asquiths and the Churchills, but also touches on strange (and some very strange) goings on in the social world of society in the 1920s and 1930s, homosexuality in high places, cross-dressing, gardening, the power of money, derring-do, pioneering aviation, antisemitism and racial prejudice, the Boer war, the Spanish civil war, two world wars, evacuee children, famine in the Soviet Union, the most remarkable match in the history of cricket, the Curragh incident, the Easter uprising, Lady Diana Cooper, Lloyd George, Lawrence of Arabia, Scott of the Antarctic, Ernest Hemingway, the Rothschilds, Beaverbrook, Gandhi, the Amritsar massacre and the Raj, the financial problems of Brazil, a cast of hundreds (many of them slightly odd) and much else besides.Isaiah Berlin said after meeting her '...handsome, smart, awful woman, celebrated society wit I am told, but quite genuinely clever and entertaining, only very awful'. Churchill's daughter, the late Mary Soames who knew her well as a close friend and relative said to me, 'She was rum, you know!'

Table of Contents:
Introduction, Acknowledgments, Permissions, Illustrations, 1 An outrageous little scheme2 Families and friendships, 3 Love and affection, 4 Parties and party politics, 5 A view of life and mortality, 6 The Daimler and the Renault , 7 Young hearts broken, 8 Enter Edwin Montagu, 9 Menage a Cinq, 10 No fool like an old fool, 11 Strictly between you and me, 12 This breaks my heart, 13 Asquith's last virgin, 14 A shock all round, 15 Over to Sylvia, 16 The Merchant of Venetia, 17 Kathleen and Hilda, 18 Fall from grace, 19 The ripe fruits of sexuality, 20 Keeping unusual company, 21 That strange gnome, 22 Peace and infidelity in Paris, 23 A career's end and a life's beginning, 24 Life after Westminster, 25 To Brazil and back, 26 The year everything changed, 27 Venetia alone, 28 Still alone, 29 Flying for fun, 30 The world their oyster, 31 Picking up the threads, 32 Home thoughts - mostly from abroad, 33 A little trouble in Spain, 34 Another year, another war, 35 Breccles Hall at war, 36 Conjugal carnage, 37 Peace at last, Select Bibliography, Principle Sources, References, Index