Outrageously handsome, witty and clever, Harry Cust was reputed to be one of the great womanisers of the late Victorian era. In 1893, while a Member of Parliament, he caused public scandal by his affair with artist and poet Nina Welby Gregory. When she revealed she was pregnant, horror swept through their circle known as 'the Souls', a cultured, mostly aristocratic group of writers, artists and politicians who also rubbed shoulders with luminaries such as Oscar Wilde and H. G. Wells.

For the rest of their lives, Harry and Nina would fight to rebuild their reputations and maintain the marriage they were pressurised to enter. In Tangled Souls, acclaimed biographer Jane Dismore tells the tumultuous story of the romance which threatened to tear apart this distinguished group of friends, revealing pre-war society at its most colourful and most conflicted.

About the Author
Jane Dismore is a freelance historian and biographer. Her books include Duchesses (Blink), which was serialised in the Mail on Sunday, and Princess (Thistle; Lyons) on the early life of Elizabeth II, a source for the recent ITV and PBS documentary Our Queen in Wartime. She is a former practising solicitor and a member of the Society of Authors and the Biographers' Club. She lives in Hertfordshire.

Reviews

With painstaking skill, Dismore lays bare the double standards of the Souls - a brilliant group who thought themselves superior, in morals and intellect, to the rest of their class

-- Artemis Cooper, author of Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure

Harry Cust has long needed to emerge from the shadows. A rich tapestry unfolds

-- Hugo Vickers, author of The Sphinx: The Life of Gladys Deacon - Duchess of Marlborough

Brilliant ... Through original research, Dismore has crafted an upper-class soap opera to rival Downton Abbey and The Crown

-- Lyndsy Spence, The Lady



Book Information
ISBN 9780750996624
Author Jane Dismore
Format Hardback
Imprint The History Press Ltd
Publisher The History Press Ltd