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Last week, I took a preview look at the Paralympics and was surprised to learn that the torch relay begins in the UK.

Book: The Diamond of London by Andrea Penrose
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Kensington Books
Publication date: 2024

Source: E-book borrowed from the library

Summary: The Diamond of London tells the story of Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman best known for her adventures in the Levant — areas of what we now call the Middle East.

This story, though, happens earlier. When Hester lived in England, she was already a remarkable woman. Her uncle, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, didn’t have a wife to manage Downing Street, so Hester, still in her 20s, took on that job. She also took over much of her uncle’s correspondence, acting as a private secretary, a role that was unheard of as a woman. Men identified her as a person close to power and consulted with her in that capacity.

Thoughts: Lady Hester Stanhope’s 250th birthday is March 12. When she was born, the US was fighting the War of Independence. I always assume that she was later in history, probably because she lived her life in what feels like a modern way.

Beyond her name and an association with the term “lady adventurer,” I knew very little about Lady Hester Stanhope. I learned a bit more last year when I read Mavericks by Jenny Draper.

I raced through this book, mostly because it was a page-turner. But also, I was in a hurry to get to the notes at the end to find out what was true and what came out of the author’s imagination. As I hoped, some of the most extraordinary things about Lady Hester Stanhope’s life were facts, not fiction. A lot of her letters survive, so her biography is well documented.

I kept reminding myself how early in history that she lived because so much of what she did is not how I believe that women lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Although, I also reminded myself that A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft was written in 1792, when Hester was sixteen. It took a long time to seize rights for women and they still need to be defended, to this day.

Appeal: The Diamond of London is a great book for history lovers. I know a little about the Regency period, mostly from romance fiction. This book gave me more of a context since we learned about the government in London during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the period when King George III was losing his grip and George IV took over as Prince Regent.