Splendour And Squalor: The Disgrace And Disintegration Of Three Aristocratic Dynasties

From stately homes and prisons to the House of Lords and Edwardian asylums--the stories, spanning the 20th century, of the disintegrating fortunes of three of Britain's most illustrious aristocratic dynasties and the scapegraces responsible

They were the black sheep of aristocracy and this is their story.They kept monkeys in West End hotels and rent-boys in Deauville and Kensington, used firearms with convincing disregard for their own and others' safety, and drove their Rollses and Bentleys with seemingly suicidal intent. They acquired yachts and helicopters as they shipped the family silver to California and disposed of Old Masters at auction; married frequently and unsatisfactorily, humiliating their wives and withholding from them family secrets of schizophrenia and insanity; sought consolation in ferocious expenditure, alcohol, and narcotics, and experimented with burglary, shoplifting, vagrancy, and fraud while shrugging off the advice of sane relations. Marcus Scriven tells the riveting and cautionary tales of Edward Fitzgerald, seventh Duke of Leinster, who died by his own hand having forfeited a 400 million inheritance; Victor Hervey, sixth Marquess of Bristol, playboy, jewel thief, fantasist, and fraudster; Angus Montagu, 12th Duke of Manchester, a four-times-married, one-time inmate of a Federal Correctional Institution who died soon after being crane-lifted out of his two-bedroom flat in Bedford; and of John Hervey, seventh Marquess of Bristol, who turned his estate into "an adult Disney," equipped with helicopters, heroin, and handcuffs