House-building and husbandry

Bess of Hardwick has usually been viewed as a hard-hearted schemer, an unscrupulous woman who triumphed in male-dominated Tudor England by never allowing emotion to impede her ambition. Allegedly driven by acquisitiveness and a lust for power, she married four times, always moving on to a husband richer than the last. Having gained a sizeable fortune, she sought immortality by founding a dynasty and building great houses, and this, too, has been seen as evidence of her predatory nature and instinct for self-aggrandisement. While no one can deny the beauty of her most famous creation, Hardwick Hall, few have doubted that the woman who erected it was deeply unpleasant. Now, however, in this impressive biography, Mary S. Lovell portrays Bess in a more sympathetic light.

The daughter of a gentleman farmer from Derbyshire, Bess was first widowed at the age of 17. Her second husband was Sir William Cavendish, a canny bureaucrat 20 years her senior, who had made substantial sums from the dissolution of the monasteries.