Sheila. The Australian Ingenue Who Bewitched British Society

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fine
Jacket Condition: Fine
Publisher: Allen And Unwin
Publisher Place: Sydney
Publisher Year: 2014
Edition: First Edition

Description: 410 pages. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in Fine condition throughout.

Publishers Description: Her name might have been plain, but she was anything but ordinary.She wedded earls and barons, befriended literary figures and movie stars, bedded a future king, was feted by London and New York society for 40 years, and when she died was a Russian princess. Born on a NSW sheep station, Sheila Chisholm, head-strong Sydney society beauty and great grand-daughter of an English soldier in the Third Fleet, was Australias first home-grown princess but she might have been so much more - perhaps even Queen Sheila of England.Vivacious, confident and striking, she met her English husband, Francis Edward Scudamore St Clair-Erskine, a first lieutenant and son of the 5th Earl of Rosslyn, when she went to Egypt during WWI to nurse her brother. Arriving in London as a young married woman, the world was at her feet - and she enjoyed it immensely. Edward, Prince of Wales, called her a divine woman, and as Lady Loughborough she conducted a clandestine affair with Bertie, the future George VI of England (Queen Elizabeths father), whose father had to bribe him with the Duchy of York to reward him for giving her up. She subsequently became Lady Milbanke and ultimately ended her days as the Princess Dimitri of Russia. She had torrid affairs with Rudolph Valentino and Prince Obolensky of Russia; she was a friend of Evelyn Waugh, Lord Beaverbrook, Wallis Simpson, Idina Sackville (the cousin of Vita Sackville-West and whose life was dramatized in the film, White Mischief) and she helped Woolworths heiress Barbara Hutton renovate Winfield House, her mansion in Regents Park which is now the American Embassy. She appeared in Ponds advertisements for cleansing cream under the headline Vivid, gay and utterly charming is Lovely Lady Milbanke and one of Cecil Beatons famous photographs of her now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.A story unknown to most Australians, Sheila is a compelling, spellbinding story of a time and a place and an utterly fascinating, extraordinary woman.

ISBN: 9781743316825