Duchess by Susan Holloway Hunt
Jan. 14th, 2007 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksAfter starting the year in reading on a high note (Meljean Brook's Demon Angel), I have read several books that either disappointed in the end or that I couldn't be arsed to finish because they bored or irritated. So, yay! that I picked up Hunt's Duchess, a fictional account of the life of Sarah Jennings Churchill, a fascinating woman who exercised an amazing amount of political power in the courts of James II, Mary & William, and Anne. Her marriage to John Churchill, military strategist par excellence, seems to have been a match of politics and passion...at least as portrayed in the book. Shrewd strategist, wise investor, manipulator extraordinaire, she was a progenitor of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (another amazing woman, though profligate), Sir Winston Churchill, and the current princes William and Harry via the Spencer family.
I'm going to have to pick up some nonfiction information about Sarah and John to see what was exaggerated, created or dramatized in order to make a good story. But that period of English history is tempestuous enough that I'm guessing not much was created; more likely just embroidered a bit.
I'm going to have to pick up some nonfiction information about Sarah and John to see what was exaggerated, created or dramatized in order to make a good story. But that period of English history is tempestuous enough that I'm guessing not much was created; more likely just embroidered a bit.
