Ettie: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough, by Richard Davenport-Hines
There was something not quite right about Lady Desborough. Richard Davenport-Hines, in this intelligent and well-written book, extols her charm, her wit, her courage, her vitality, her infinite capacity to convince any man that he was uniquely talented and the only person with whom she was concerned. The roll-call of her conquests — Balfour and Asquith, Churchill and Kitchener, Kipling and Siegfried Sassoon — attests to her potent and widespread appeal. Beatrice Webb, a woman who might have been expected to deplore everything that Ettie Desborough stood for, paid tribute to her ‘great organising capacity … iron will, excellent temper and methodical mind’.
And yet, there was a terrifying artificiality behind the highly polished veneer. She ‘told enough white lies to ice a wedding cake’, said Margot Asquith.
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