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A review by muninnherself
The Devonshires: The Story of a Family and a Nation by Roy Hattersley
3.0
I bought this at Holker Hall I think, which is a Cavendish house.
It's good, well researched, Hattersley writes good accessible history but I think it sort of fails in the 20th century. Obviously the excitement of building, of Bess of Hardwick and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire gets a lot of attention. But having read Debo Mitford's autobiographies it's clear that he barely scrapes the surface of the last Duke but one. Andrew Cavendish may have brought forth one of the first and most successfully adapted post-War visions of the enormous country pile, opening Chatsworth to we gaping proles and developing the estate, but if he'd been an 18th or 19th century duke we'd have had all the other stuff, wouldn't we, the miscarriages and the alcoholism. Not mentioned. It would have been better, perhaps, if he'd just chosen an arbitrary end, 1939 maybe, or the death of Andrew's brother, rather than making me wonder what else he'd left out, and why he chose to leave it out when Debo was happy to talk about it. I mean it's worth a read if you're interested, of course, perfectly adequate - the first two-thirds are very good.
It's good, well researched, Hattersley writes good accessible history but I think it sort of fails in the 20th century. Obviously the excitement of building, of Bess of Hardwick and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire gets a lot of attention. But having read Debo Mitford's autobiographies it's clear that he barely scrapes the surface of the last Duke but one. Andrew Cavendish may have brought forth one of the first and most successfully adapted post-War visions of the enormous country pile, opening Chatsworth to we gaping proles and developing the estate, but if he'd been an 18th or 19th century duke we'd have had all the other stuff, wouldn't we, the miscarriages and the alcoholism. Not mentioned. It would have been better, perhaps, if he'd just chosen an arbitrary end, 1939 maybe, or the death of Andrew's brother, rather than making me wonder what else he'd left out, and why he chose to leave it out when Debo was happy to talk about it. I mean it's worth a read if you're interested, of course, perfectly adequate - the first two-thirds are very good.