Bailey Catherine - Black diamonds: the downfall of an aristocratic dynasty and the fifty years that changed England

Praise for Catherine Bailey

Black Diamonds

Black Diamonds has the great gift of bringing to life personal histories.... Wonderfully paced and wholly satisfying.

Kate Atkinson, New York Times bestselling author of Life After Life

With all of the dramatic trappings and romantic details of a sweeping epic.... Vibrant and gripping.

The Observer (London)

Engrossing.... Bailey covers a wide canvas with panache.

The Times Literary Supplement (London)

Extraordinary, fascinating, harrowing. A truly compelling read.

Sunday Telegraph (London)

Brilliant, gripping.... One heck of a good read and will keep you bolt upright all night.

Daily Telegraph (London)

A fascinating story.... Breaks the heart and haunts the memory.

Country Life (London)

Research worthy of an unsolved serial killing.

The Sunday Times (London)

A compelling new history.... Fascinating insights into the dynasty that once ruled this Yorkshire roost.

Daily Mail (London)

A triumph of research.

Evening Standard (London)

Bailey offers an extraordinarily vivid series of descriptions of life at Wentworth.

Literary Review (London)

Black Diamonds admirably reflects both the nobility of the miners and the degradation of those who exploited them.

The Guardian (London)

The Secret Rooms

With gripping detail and graceful prose... Baileys work can best be described as a work of probative history written with the storytelling skills of a latter-day Agatha Christie.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

In pages more reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe than Evelyn Waugh... [Bailey] reminds us why this seemingly insignificant story bears telling.

The New York Times Book Review

Populated with a bevy of real-life aristos who played by their own twisted and privileged set of rules, a searing portrait of family intrigue, dysfunction, and hubris la Downton Abbeyemerges.

Booklist

Bailey deserves commendation for her meticulous research as well as her storytelling.

Publishers Weekly

Bailey is truly a dogged detective.... A compelling expos.

Kirkus Reviews

Not all adventures in the archives are as thrilling to the reader as the researcher, but here Baileys gift for suspense, which ends each chapter with a question, carries us over any threatened longueurs.

The Times Literary Supplement (London)

Gripping. Reads like the best kind of mystery story. It is a tale of mistresses and heirlooms, cowardice and connivance.

The Sunday Times (London)

Compelling. A remarkable piece of research which throws a bright shaft of light on powerful people, hypocrisy, and the First World War.

The Guardian (London)

The mysterious death of a duke and a castle full of treacherous goings-on make The Secret Rooms a gripping read for fans of Downton Abbey. As thrilling as any fiction, Catherine Bailey uncovers the darkest depths of a family with plenty of skeletons in its closet.

Good Housekeeping

Astonishing, jaw-dropping, superb. Horrifying.

Sunday Telegraph (London)

Extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat, enthralling. The plot is thick with destroyed documents, decadent aristocracy, betrayed honor, and curses.

Metro

Wonderful.... Has everything: family intrigue and hatred, love and war, witches curses, eccentricity, snobbery, and a series of shocking secrets. No reader can finish it unmoved.

Sunday Express (London)

Teems with hypocrisy, deceit, parental manipulation, and bullying. Bailey artfully shows how guilt, grief, pride, and shame levied a heavy toll.

Literary Review (London)

An extraordinary detective operation.

John Julius Norwich, author and historian

Excellent. A fine, suspenseful, atmospheric tale, a less melodramatic and more nuanced Downton Abbey.

Daily Express (London)

Baileys fascinating book takes us to the heart of a family tragedy.... This is a horrifying story of love, despair, intrigue, snobbery and upper class eccentricity which reads like fiction but is amazinglyand shockinglyreal.

Lancashire Evening Post (UK)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Bailey read history at Oxford University. She is a successful, award-winning telvision producer and director, making a range of critically acclaimed documentary films inspired by her interest in twentieth-century history. She lives in west London.

Black Diamonds

The Downfall of an Aristocratic Dynasty and the Fifty Years That Changed England

CATHERINE BAILEY

In memory of my grandmother Eve, with love

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in Great Britain by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd 2007

Published in Penguin Books (UK) 2008

Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2014

Copyright 2007 by Catherine Bailey

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

ISBN: 978-0-698-18295-0

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Billy, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, 1911

Troops guarding Wentworth House during the coal riots of 1893

The Marble Salon at Wentworth House, 1924

The Whistlejacket Room at Wentworth House, 1924

. William, 6th Earl Fitzwilliam, and his wife, Harriet, Countess Fitzwilliam, c. 1865

William, Lord Milton, c. 1860

Billy, later 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, 1878

William, Lord Milton, in Canada, 1863

Laura, Lady Milton, c. 1870

Pointe de Meuron, 1869

The house where Billy, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, was born

A group of male indoor servants at Wentworth, 1912

The outdoor servants at Wentworth, c. 1906

The housekeeper and some of the housemaids at Wentworth, c. 1890

A ploughing team on the Wentworth Estate, c. 1900

Maud, Lady Milton, later Countess Fitzwilliam, at the Devonshire House Ball, July 1897

Miners from the Fitzwilliams collieries, c. 1910

Main Street, Wentworth village, 1905

Loversall Street, Denaby, 1903

The Denaby Bag Muck Strike, January 1903: police evict miners and their families from their homes

Faceworkers hewing coal

A deputy below ground, 1912

Digging for coal during the 1912 strike

A young miner

Pit lads and pony

Queen Mary at Silverwood colliery, July 1912

King George V and Billy, 7th Earl Fitzwilliam, at Elsecar colliery, July 1912

Crowds wait for news of fatalities on the morning of the Cadeby colliery disaster, July 1912