The Book Depository Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Karl Shaw
209 ratings
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Price: £10.36
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know : Paperback : Little, Brown Book Group : 9781472136695 : 1472136691 : 17 Apr 2018 : A riotously entertaining account of the lives of British and other European aristocrats - stories of madness, murder, misery, greed and profligacy. The Book Depository Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Karl Shaw - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9781472136695
MPN: 1472136691
GTIN: 9781472136695
Author: Alto Saxx
Rating: 5
Review: Informative and entertaining, to think their genes are with us still in modern form makes me think of some of their offspring with whom I've served with, quite understandably nuts, a work of sociological history which has given me an insight of the area from which I sprung in Staffordshire, and to this day a statue of one of the richest protagonists still peers I believe over the land he once owned visible from th A34, (Trentham) due to the very fact his wife was involved in the bitter land clearances and their total disregard for the poor they should blow it up.
Author: William Cross
Rating: 2
Review: I confine my remarks to correcting the reference in the book to Lady “Katherine” Tredegar “who came to believe that she was a kingfisher and built herself [a] bird’s nests big enough for her to sit in” The Author has merely cribbed from long since discredited and corrected references to Katharine ( please note the spelling of her name). Sadly and inevitably repeating these claims maligns a dear lady’s memory. Lady Katharine Agnes Blanche Carnegie ( 1867-1949) was the wife of Courtenay, the 3rd Lord Tredegar, who was made a Viscount in 1926. Katharine was a complex figure, yes, she was eccentric, and yes she had foibles, she could be crotchety and sensitive to noise – she is best described in the diaries of Aldous Huxley and Frances Stevenson. Katharine always had a touching love for birds and constructed small nests made from moss and twigs as a way of relieving her arthritis. The authority for this is the journalist / writer Cecil Roberts in his book "The Bright Twenties". In fact Roberts subsequently heard from Katharine's own lips an explanation of performing in front of him her odd ' hobby' of making bird's nests at her home in Grosvenor Square, London in the 1920s. The yarn about "nests were big enough to sit in" originated as a JOKE by Katharine’s wayward son Evan Morgan, the 2nd and last Viscount Tredegar. Unfortunately the story took off and has since been repeated over an over in a shameful display of mocking a harmless old dowager. There are surviving members of the Carnegie family who knew Katharine who find offensive the inferences about her state mind as in this small fragment. Efforts have been made in several books and articles to debunk the tall story of the giant nests and replace it with something accurate and sourced, regarding Katharine's love of birds and add something worthy about her life. She spent an idyllic childhood in Scotland with a collection of noteworthy siblings, her father and brother were epic adventurers in Canada, Australia and Africa; Katharine was also a writer, an opera lover, and a tireless fund raiser for Welsh charities in the Great War. She also designed stain glass windows, included several surviving featuring birds at her old homestead in Rowhook, Surrey! The Author is at least right about Katharine’s affection for Augustus John ( who painted her twice) and Ambrose McEvoy who also captured Katharine on canvas. The Author would gain my respect ( and a higher rating of the book ) if he corrected the reference to Katharine, Lady Tredegar in any reprint.
