Product Description

A detailed look at the two women in the life of Edward VII during his last years. Alice Keppel, youngest daughter of a Scottish retired admiral and MP emerged from obscurity in 1898 to become the publicly acknowledged mistress of the portly, fun-loving Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. Agnes Keyser, daughter of a prominent member of the Stock exchange, defied social expectations by not marrying, instead becoming involved in hospital charity work. Her twelve-year relationship with the king was much less in the public eye, but was just as important.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1250017 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

Steer well clear!
How this book ever made it into print is beyond me. I am passionately interested in the history of royalty and society in the early years of the twentieth century and so approached 'Edward VII's Last Loves' with high hopes. I was desperately disappointed. Lamont-Brown has one of the dullest and most leaden prose styles I have ever come across. Any human interest is totally lost in the dense genealogical tangles the author cannot resist attempting (and usually failing) to unravel on virtually every page. The fact that these digressions often have little or no relevance to the characters at the heart of his story, and are desperately boring besides, was apparantly given little consideration by either author or editor. The narrative pace is further held up by Lamont-Brown's habit of supplying the 'dates' for every individual he mentions in the body of the text. This information, potentially useful though it might be, should really have been confined to footnotes, where it rightfully belongs.

Far more worryingly, Lamont-Brown makes some serious errors in attributing primary sources. Whether this is sheer laziness on his part or whether he actively intended to 'bend' the facts to his purpose is open to question. But NOTHING would induce me to pick up his book again.

Steer well clear!