Duchess Countess News Today

The history of rubber production is charged with social injustice and rapacity. In “Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia,” professor Gregg Mitman looks at Firestones actions in the 1920s.

 A new book takes us inside the courtroom where the Duchess of Kingston stood trial for bigamy—and became an international sensation. 

Authors rejected the reductionism of cancel culture to embrace everyone from Churchill to Orwell in all their complicated glory

Authors rejected the reductionism of cancel culture to embrace everyone from Churchill to Orwell in all their complicated glory

Hulton Archive / Getty Images In the late summer of 1777, anyone standing on the banks of the Gulf of Finland might have beheld a most spellbinding sight: a three-masted maritime marvel of polished wood and golden paint, its sails billowing in the northern wind. On the deck of the yacht, they might have spotted the lone figure of a woman, her eyes fixed on the course of the Neva river flowing towards St Petersburg. If they could have seen inside, they would have found contents as exotic as the ...

Rebecca Cope On Friday 21 May, the British Library in association with HistFest will digitally host ‘Outrageous Women: The Remarkable Lives of Elizabeth Chudleigh and Caroline Norton’, streamed via video. The writers will be in conversation with fellow author Hallie Rubenhold, as they discuss two women who defied society’s conventions to fearlessly forge their own paths. Read next Anne Boleyn actress Jodie Turner-Smith...

With Lady Antonia Fraser and Catherine Ostler in conversation with Hallie Rubenhold This is an online event hosted on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time. The stories of two women who refused to be defined by society’s expectations. Award winning historian Antonia Fraser introduces Caroline Norton, a 19th-century poet and pamphleteer who became a pioneering women’s rights a...

The Duchess Countess by Catherine Ostler Elizabeth Chudleigh is best known today for being convicted of bigamy at an “explosive trial” in 1776, said Marcus Field in the London Evening Standard. Yet as Catherine Ostler’s impeccably researched biography reveals, her life was “jaw-dropping” right the way through. Born in 1721, she was the daughter of a minor aristocrat who died when she was five. Aged 22, she secured an entrée into high society when she was appointed maid of honour to t...

Rating: In 1776, Elizabeth Chudleigh, former royal lady-in-waiting and dedicated party girl, found herself fighting for her freedom and reputation in front of the House of Lords.  She had been summoned to defend herself against the charge of bigamy. Dressed for drama, and modelling her look on that of the tragic Mary Queen of Scots two centuries earlier, ‘the Duchess Countess’ as she was popularly known, played the role of tragic heroine to perfection.  Tickets for the court went on sale...