9780748112265_

From the bestselling author of The Mitford Girls: A wonderfully researched (Sunday Express) biography of Bess of Hartwick, the most powerful woman in England next to Queen Elizabeth

Bringing the Tudor Age to exuberant life (Hugh Massingberd, Mail on Sunday), Mary S. Lovell tells the story of Bess of Hardwick,, one of the most remarkable women of the Tudor era. Gently-born in reduced circumstances, she was married at 15 and when she was widowed at 16, she was still a virgin. At 19 she married a man more than twice her age, Sir William Cavendish, a senior auditor in King Henry VIIIs Court of Augmentations. Responsible for seizing church properties for the crown during the Dissolution, Cavendish enriched himself in the process. During the reign of King Edward VI, Cavendish was the Treasurer to the boy king and sisters, and he and Bess moved in the highest levels of society. They had a London home and built Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. After Cavendishs death her third husband was poisoned by his brother. Bess fourth marriage to the patrician George, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl Marshall of England, made Bess one of the most important women at court. Her shrewd business acumen was a byword, and she was said to have a masculine understanding, in that age when women had little education and few legal rights. The Earls death made her arguably the wealthiest, and therefore - next to the Queen - the most powerful woman in the country.

This wonderfully researched book is an intimate portrait of Besss life and a vivid insight into life in Tudor society Sunday Express

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A biography of one of the most remarkable women of the Tudor era - next to Queen Elizabeth the most powerful woman in England

Bess of Hardwick, born into the most brutal and turbulent period of Englands history, did not have an auspicious start in life. Widowed for the first time at sixteen, she nonetheless outlived four monarchs, married three more times, and died one of the wealthiest and most powerful women the country has ever seen.

The Tudor age was a hazardous time for an ambitious woman: by the time Frances, Besss first child, was six, three of her illustrious godparents had been beheaded. Plague regularly wiped out entire families, conspiracies and feuds were rife. But through all this Bess Hardwick bore eight children and built an empire of her own: the great houses of Chatsworth and Hardwick.

The best account yet of this shrewd, enigmatic and remarkable woman Sunday Times

Lovell has excelled at bringing the Tudor age to exuberant life. A phenomenal story Mail on Sunday

Utterly absorbing... one of those biographies in which the reader really doesnt want the subject to die Independent on Sunday

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Bess Of Hardwick

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