Forbidden Wife: The Life and Trails of Lady Augusta Murray

- Blurb -

The first and definitive tale of the tumultuous and tragic life of Lady Augusta Murray, the forbidden wife of the 1st Duke of Sussex. As darkness descended over Rome on 4 April 1793, preparations were being made for a clandestine ceremony. The wedding of the son of the King of England to the daughter of the Governor of the Bahamas would not only be concealed, it would also be illegal, the ceremony extorted from a priest without the knowledge - never mind permission - of the King. The Prince and Augusta had known each other for only three months. They were deeply in love but the consequences of their rash union would be terrible for them both. It was the worst miscalculation of the Prince's life but, while he eventually found redemption, Augusta's destiny was changed beyond anything she might have imagined: from an eighteenth-century socialite she became a nineteenth-century reject. A tragic riches to rags tale of forbidden love and grave injustice, Julia Abel Smith pulls together for the first time research from the Royal Archives, the Dunmore family papers and local archives to create an exhaustive biography of Lady Augusta Murray - a volume that no fan of royal history should be without. AUTHOR: Julia Abel Smith is a graduate of Cambridge University with a degree in History of Art, which she has used in a long career with The Landmark Trust and more recently with Art UK. It was while writing a history album for The Pineapple Folly that Julia happened across Augusta's story and decided to research her biography. She has written for Country Life and House & Garden magazines, and is the author of Augusta's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. She lives in Essex. 16 b/w illustrations