Non fiction about aristocratic families

[Bavariamaria]

Does anyone have any recommendations please? Have worked my way through everything to do with the Mitford sisters and looking for anything similar about big families with lots going on.

Stella Tillyard, Aristocrats, is a jolly read on 4 18th century sisters

Angela Lambert, Unquiet Souls, on a late 19th century social group

Both quite old books now, but worth looking out for!

Someone on another thread recommended Indian Summer by Alex Van Tunzelman which is about the Mountbattens but has a lot about the British in India. I've only just started it but it's a good read so far!

Thank you @HomeCountyHome and @RainbowBagels these all look perfect

Anne, Lady Glenconner has written several books, memoir and fiction. She was a lady in waiting to Elizabeth II. I actually don't know if they're any good, but they do get borrowed reasonably often from the library I work in.

The Romanovs, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Daughters of Hesse. About four sisters who were granddaughters of Queen Victoria. One became Tsarina, another married a Russian Grand Duke, another married the brother of Kaiser Wilhelm and the other married someone of suitable rank but who wasn’t such a key historical figure

Anne De Courcy has written some good books about the American heiresses who married into the British aristocracy in the 1880s.

Black Diamonds - Catherine Bailey about Wentworth Woodhouse. I read this some time ago but remember enjoying it.

Yes, Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconner is a fabulous read.

Hope you all won't mind me suggesting my own book on this exact subject which is out in September! It's called Heirs and Graces and it's available for pre-order from book selling operations of all kinds and in every medium!

(I absolutely didn't search this especially, just saw it scrolling before bed; usually only confine myself to The Doghouse on here!)

www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305/heirs-and-graces-by-doughty-eleanor/9781529153040

As such I have a million suggestions for related books – many of which are in the bibliography of my book!

I was about to recommend Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats, which is brilliant.

William Dalrymple’s White Mughals. Juliet Nicholson’s A House Full of Daughters, about seven generations of women in her aristocratic family — or indeed any of the biographies/studies of Vita Sackville-West, her grandmother? Nigel Nicholson’s Portrait of A Marriage, about his parents’ unconventional marriage?

What about Fiona McCarthy’s The Last Curtsy, about the final debutante season? Phyllida Barstow The English Country Hoise Party?

Juliet nicholson’s the perfect summer

My GGF is in Black Diamonds! 😬

The Riviera Set is gloriously schlocky and informative about the rise to chic of the South of France between the Wars.

France’s Osborne’s book on Happy Valley in 1930s is a cracker, famous murder inc..

Nancy Mitford’s The Sun King and her other royal gossip histories are unmissable.

Thank you so much everyone, plenty of brilliant ideas. I have read Anne Glenconner's books and really enjoyed them too.All of the suggestions will keep me going for a while 😀

@brushingboots congratulations on your book! I have ordered, looking forward to the bibliography!

I started Indian Summer last night, really enjoying it.

Thanks for this thread! I have just ordered 4 of the books recommendations 😁

Good luck with your book @brushingboots - it is now on my list!

Patrick Fermor's travel books often involve aristocrats. He was fascinated by them, and his descriptions of their lives are wonderful. But he wrote more about German, Romanian, and Austro-Hungarians.

Nabokov's autobiography, Speak Memory, is really worth a look. You don't have to read the whole thing. He was born into the pre-revolutionary Russian aristocracy, and the chapters about his childhood, his eccentric relations, and so on, are great.

Oh and Bertrand Russell's autobiography is great too. Again, born into the aristocracy (though, like Nabokov, highly critical of them).

@Bavariamaria @ALPS100 thank you both, very kind! My house is full of such books, it’s a great topic to fall down the rabbit hole of, though I would say that!

Catherine Bailey who wrote Black Diamonds also wrote the excellent Secret Rooms which I whipped through – it’s very good indeed, about the Rutlands. If anyone likes diaries, James Lees-Milne’s diaries are superb, as are Anthony Powell’s and Cecil Beaton’s, and there are lots of all of them. JLM’s go right up to almost the millennium and start in ~1940 so are an amazing study of the upper class. And also Chips Channon’s, though he is a good deal meaner than JLM and lovely Anthony Powell, both of whom I adore.

@Supersimkin7 Would love to know who you know in Black Diamonds – the first chapter of my book is about the Fitzwilliams! I had such fun writing it.

I read a really good book about Queen Victoria’s household. Can’t remember what it was called though. There are also some good books about Edward 7ths children and George 5ths.

You said you've read everything about the Mitford sisters but I wonder if you've read In Tearing Haste. It's a series of letters between Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor. I adored it, one of my favourite books.

I can highly recommend The Mistresses of Cliveden :Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue in an English Stately Home, by Natalie Livingstone.
(I also really rate Black Diamonds, & can honestly say afternoon tea at Cliveden is amazing )

Brilliant, thank you so much.

I haven't read that one @Bridport thank you!

White Mischief by James Fox - about the murder of Josslyn Hay and set in Nairobi.
Lots of debauched aristocrats and v bad behaviour.

Do long since dead aristocrats - ancestors of the Mitfords count?
I loved Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman. (And there’s a film about her starring Kiera Knightly…… which you may or may not like!)
Also Mrs Robinsons disgrace and other books by Kate Summerscale

Was about to mention this. I really enjoyed ‘Lady in waiting’ her first book (not read the others).

Unruly - David Mitchell, about the Kings and Queens on Britain