• Complain

Carnarvon Almina - Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle

Here you can read online Carnarvon Almina - Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: New York, Great Britain, Great Britain, year: 2011, publisher: Crown Publishing Group;Broadway Paperbacks, genre: Art / Prose. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover

Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowess Emmy Award-winning PBS show, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. Lady Almina was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Alfred de Rothschild, who married his daughter off at a young age, her dowry serving as the crucial link in the effort to preserve the Earl of Carnarvons ancestral home. Throwing open the doors of Highclere Castle to tend to the wounded of World War I, Lady Almina distinguished herself as a brave and remarkable woman. Read more...
Abstract: Tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowess Emmy Award-winning PBS show, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. Lady Almina was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Alfred de Rothschild, who married his daughter off at a young age, her dowry serving as the crucial link in the effort to preserve the Earl of Carnarvons ancestral home. Throwing open the doors of Highclere Castle to tend to the wounded of World War I, Lady Almina distinguished herself as a brave and remarkable woman

Carnarvon Almina: author's other books


Who wrote Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Copyright 2011 by 8th Countess of Carnarvon All rights reserved Published in - photo 1
Copyright 2011 by 8th Countess of Carnarvon All rights reserved Published in - photo 2

Picture 3

Copyright 2011 by 8th Countess of Carnarvon

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, a Hachette U.K. company, London, in 2011.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-7704-3563-9

Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photography: Highclere Castle Archive
Author photograph: Tobi Corney Photography

v3.1_r2

For my husband and son, who I adore,
and my beloved sisters

Contents
Prologue

This is a book about an extraordinary woman called Almina Carnarvon, the family into which she married, the Castle that became her home, the people who worked there, and the transformation of the Castle when it became a hospital for wounded soldiers during the First World War.

It is not a history, although it is set against the exuberance of the Edwardian period, the sombre gravity of the Great War and the early years of recovery after the conflict.

It is neither a biography nor a work of fiction, but places characters in historical settings, as identified from letters, diaries, visitor books and household accounts written at the time.

Almina Carnarvon was an enormously wealthy heiress, the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild. She was contracted in marriage to the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, a key player in Edwardian society in Britain. His interests were many and eclectic. He loved books and travel and pursued every opportunity to explore the technologies that were transforming his age. Most famously he discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun with Howard Carter.

Almina was an unbelievably generous woman in spirit and with her money. She was a guest at some of the greatest royal pageants, until as it did for so many people the First World War transformed her life, involving her in running hospitals instead of great house parties and showing her to be an adept nurse and skilled healer.

Highclere Castle is still home to the Earls of Carnarvon. Via its television alter ego, Downton Abbey, it is known to millions of people as the setting for a drama that has thrilled viewers in more than a hundred countries around the world.

Living here for the past twelve years, I have come to know the bones and stones of the Castle. My research has revealed some of the stories of the fascinating people who lived here, but there is so much more. My journey has just started.

The Countess of Carnarvon

1 Pomp and Circumstance On Wednesday 26 June 1895 Miss Almina Victoria Marie - photo 4

1 Pomp and Circumstance On Wednesday 26 June 1895 Miss Almina Victoria Marie - photo 5

1
Pomp and Circumstance

On Wednesday 26 June 1895, Miss Almina Victoria Marie Alexandra Wombwell, a startlingly pretty nineteen-year-old of somewhat dubious social standing, married George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, at St Margarets, Westminster.

It was a lovely day, and the thousand-year-old white stone church was crowded with people and overflowing with gorgeous flowers. Some of the congregation on the grooms side might perhaps have remarked that the decorations were a little ostentatious. The nave had been filled with tall potted palm trees whilst ferns spilled from the recesses. The chancel and sanctuary were adorned with white lilies, orchids, peonies and roses. There was a distinct touch of the exotic, combined with the heady scents of English summer flowers. It was an unusual spectacle, but then everything about this wedding was unusual. Alminas name, the circumstances of her birth and most of all her exceptional wealth, all contributed to the fact that this was no typical Society wedding.

The Earl was getting married on his twenty-ninth birthday. His family and title were distinguished and he was slim and charming, if somewhat reserved. He owned houses in London, Hampshire, Somerset, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. His estates were grand; the houses were filled with paintings by the Old Masters, objects brought back from trips to the East and beautiful French furniture. Naturally he was received in every drawing room in the country and invited to every party in London, especially where there was an eligible daughter or niece for him to meet. Though they would doubtless have been gracious on such a special occasion, there must have been some inwardly disappointed ladies in the congregation that day.

He arrived with his best man, Prince Victor Duleep Singh, a friend from Eton and then Cambridge. The Prince was the son of the ex-Maharaja of Punjab, who had owned the Koh-i-Noor diamond before it was confiscated by the British for inclusion in the Crown Jewels of Queen Victoria, Empress of India.

The sun poured through the new stained-glass windows, which depicted English heroes across the centuries. The ancient church, which stands next to Westminster Abbey, had recently been refurbished by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the pre-eminent Victorian architect. The church was, in fact, a quintessentially Victorian blend of the traditional and the modern. It was the perfect setting for this marriage of people who came from such different sections of society, but who were each in possession of something the other needed.

As the organist, Mr Baines, struck up the opening chords of the hymn The Voice That Breathed oer Eden, Almina, who had been waiting in the entrance porch, took her first steps. She walked slowly and with as much calm and dignity as she could muster with all those eyes upon her, her gloved hand resting lightly on that of her uncle, Sir George Wombwell. There must have been nerves, but she was excited, too. Her soon-to-be-husbands brother-in-law, Lord Burghclere, had remarked that she was something of a nave damsel, but also that she appeared to be head over ears in love and could barely contain herself in the weeks and days leading up to her wedding day.

Perhaps she took some comfort from the knowledge that she looked exquisite. She was tiny, just over five foot tall, with blue eyes and a straight nose framed by glossy brown hair elegantly styled high on her head. Her future sister-in-law, Winifred Burghclere, described her as very pretty, with an immaculate figure and tiny waist. In the language of the time, she was a veritable Pocket Venus.

She wore a small wreath of orange blossoms under a veil of fine silk tulle. Her dress was by the House of Worth, of Paris. Charles Worth was the most fashionable couturier of the age and was known for his use of lavish fabrics and trimmings. Alminas dress was made of the richest duchesse satin with a full court train and draped in a veil of lace caught up on one shoulder. The skirts were threaded with real orange flowers and Almina was wearing a gift from the bridegroom: a piece of very old and extremely rare French lace that had been incorporated into the dress.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle»

Look at similar books to Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle»

Discussion, reviews of the book Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.