Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty
by Catherine Bailey
3.9 of 5 stars
3.90 · rating details · 753 ratings · 147 reviews 23
House of privilege, riches and secrets...

Wentworth is today a crumbling and forgotten palace in Yorkshire. Yet just a hundred years ago is was the ancestral pile of the Fitzwilliams - an aristocratic clan whose home and life were fuelled by coal mining.

Black Diamonds tells of the Fitzwilliams' spectacular decline: of inheritance fights; rumours of a changeling and of lunacy; philandering earls; illicit love; war heroism; a tragic connection to the Kennedys; violent death; mining poverty and squalor; and a class war that literally ripped apart the local landscape.

The demise of Wentworth and the Fitzwilliams is a riveting account of aristocratic decline and fall, set in the grandest house in England.



Catherine Bailey
Biography
Catherine Bailey read history at Oxford University and is an award-winning television producer and director, making a range of critically acclaimed documentary films inspired by her interest in twentieth century history. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Secret Rooms and Black Diamonds. She lives in West London.

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