Sarah Burton

A fascinating woman, ill-served

Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope, by Kirsten Ellis<br /> <br type="_moz" />

issue 13 September 2008

Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope, by Kirsten Ellis

Unlike her republican-minded father, ‘Citizen Stanhope’, Hester declared ‘I am an aristocrat and I make a boast of it’. After falling out with him (her mother had died when Hester was four) and quarrelling with his heir, her brother, in her early twenties she made her home with her uncle, William Pitt the Younger, but even a privileged position at the centre of London political and social life was not enough for Hester. She embarked on a series of love affairs and adventures which were to earn her notoriety and were to end with her living almost alone (and at least slightly deranged) in the fortress-like house she had built on a hill near Mount Lebanon. In the intervening years she had been an explorer, an informal ambassador, a spy, and had endured a shipwreck, crossed deserts and survived plague.

Unfortunately, while Kirsten Ellis dutifully records the events of Hester’s life she never really offers an explanation as to why her subject broke so completely with convention, and has a tendency to describe Hester’s thoughts and feelings without offering evidence or examples, and frequently gives no source for her claims.

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