Frances Osborne

* 'This is a truly astonishing book. Frances Osborne has not just brought to life a dizzyingly rich and scandalous slice of social history, she has produced a tragic and deeply moving tale as well. It is far more gripping than any novel I have read for ye

Idina Sackville - the Woman who Scandalised 1920s Society and Became White Mischief's Infamous Seductress

The Bolter

On Friday 25th May, 1934, a forty-one-year-old woman walked into the lobby of Claridge's Hotel to meet the nineteen-year-old son whose face she did not know. Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man. An inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter, painted by William Orpen, and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Sackville went on to divorce a total of five times, yet died with a picture of her first love by her bed. Her struggle to reinvent her life with each new marriage left one husband murdered and branded her the 'high priestess' of White Mischief's bed-hopping Happy Valley in Kenya. Sackville's life was so scandalous that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne. Now, Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville's road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century.

Idina Sackville - The woman who scandalised 1920s Society and became White Mischief's infamous seductress

Laura Mauler

Gossip about ultra rich people is always fun, even if those people's exploits took place 100 years ago. On that strength alone it is definitely a good read.

However, I have two problems with the book. First is the emphasis placed upon the gorgeousness, the irresistible beauty of Idina. The book is filled with photos and I am dumbfounded by these claims; Idina looks exactly like former Prime Minister Theresa May. Not. Sexy.

The second problem, and much more serious from the readers' perspective, is the motivation behind Idina's "bolt" from her first marriage. Here's what we are told about social norms for the ultra wealthy at that time: sex outside of a marriage is totally fine, for both men and women, as long as one was discreet and the husbands only had sex with married women. Married men having sex with unmarried women was a huge no-no because it threatened titles and inheritances, as well as could cause unwanted pregnancies (married women could just slip bastard children into their existing brood). The author makes clear beyond a doubt that both Idina and her first husband subscribed whole-heartedly to this sexual system. So, okay. Idina and her first husband are full-tilt gangbusters in love, he goes off to war, they both have loads of sex with other people. She gets seriously ill, he's home on leave for 4 months and spends it not at her bedside but having sex with a married woman and also making goo-goo eyes at some sexy young unmarried thing. And this is what tanks the marriage! He abides by the rules of the sexual system and yet she still feels betrayed and chucks everything - including her kids - to go off with a guy she barely knows. It is scarcely believable. One can either not accept the author's characterization of the events, or one can accept it and view Idina as the very worst type of hypocrite; I go with the latter. 

Definitely a good book, but that pivotal decision of Idina's is beyond bizarre.

Pam Sartain

This was a fascinating view of a woman in the 1920s onwards who left a man before he left her, and had to deal with the consquences for the rest of her life, and the consequences it had for her children.

The Bolter Idina Sackville - the Woman who Scandalised 1920s Society and Became White Mischief's Infamous Seductress

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