As seen on Woman’s Hour, BBC Newsnight and in the Daily Telegraph  

A hundred years ago, on the night of 3 October 1922, a thirty-two-year-old clerk named Percy Thompson was stabbed to death as he walked home to his suburban villa in Ilford. With him was his wife, twenty-eight-year-old Edith. His killer was Edith’s lover: Frederick Bywaters, a merchant seaman aged twenty. Bywaters was hanged for murder on 9 January 1923. So too was Edith Thompson.

There was no evidence, of any kind, that she was involved with the killing. What condemned Edith were the letters that she had written to her lover, which were interpreted by the law as incitement to murder. These letters are remarkable documents. Charged with the vitality of Edith’s voice, they are moving, perplexing, maddening, banal, spectacularly sensual, infused with a stream-of-consciousness immediacy. And they have never been collected in print, until now.

In Au Revoir Now Darlint  Laura Thompson – author of the CWA Gold Dagger-shortlisted Rex vs Edith Thompson -  gathers the letters together alongside  illuminating commentary to tell the story of an ordinary life and an extraordinary imagination that ultimately led to appalling tragedy.

‘Witty, insightful, deliciously gossip-laden and slightly scandalous… Heiresses makes for an entertaining, occasionally sad and never less than gripping read’ Anne Sebba

‘Excellent… [A] wonderfully entertaining book’ Sunday Times

‘Exquisite and gossipy… Thompson, a gifted storyteller, obviously delighted in the writing of this book’ TLS

‘[A] deeply empathetic study of heiresses through the ages’ The Times

‘Life is less sad with money’, said Emerald Cunard; Barbara Hutton was the ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’, but which is true?

Laura Thompson explores the phenomenon of the heiress from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Take Mary Davies, a child bride at the age of twelve, and her thousand-acre dowry of today’s Mayfair and Belgravia, which gave the Grosvenors their stupendous wealth. Or Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, whose American railroad fortune helped sustain Blenheim Palace. Winnaretta Singer showcased the work of Debussy in her Parisian salon; Daisy Fellowes enjoyed parties, fashion – and other people’s husbands – without shame or conscience. Alice de Janzé shot one of her lovers and was suspected of murdering a second; Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, married seven times.

Money should mean power and opportunity, but in the hands of these women it was so often absent. Why did so many struggle to live with so much? Did the removal of need render their life meaningless? Were they riven with guilt at all they had, knowing they really should be happy? With her signature intelligence and wit, Laura Thompson tells these women’s stories – glittering and fascinating but often sad and scandalous – on a gripping search for the answer.

‘Witty, insightful, deliciously gossip-laden and slightly scandalous… Heiresses makes for an entertaining, occasionally sad and never less than gripping read’ Anne Sebba

‘Excellent… [A] wonderfully entertaining book’ Sunday Times

‘Exquisite and gossipy… Thompson, a gifted storyteller, obviously delighted in the writing of this book’ TLS

‘[A] deeply empathetic study of heiresses through the ages’ The Times

‘Life is less sad with money’, said Emerald Cunard; Barbara Hutton was the ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’, but which is true?

Laura Thompson explores the phenomenon of the heiress from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Take Mary Davies, a child bride at the age of twelve, and her thousand-acre dowry of today’s Mayfair and Belgravia, which gave the Grosvenors their stupendous wealth. Or Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, whose American railroad fortune helped sustain Blenheim Palace. Winnaretta Singer showcased the work of Debussy in her Parisian salon; Daisy Fellowes enjoyed parties, fashion – and other people’s husbands – without shame or conscience. Alice de Janzé shot one of her lovers and was suspected of murdering a second; Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, married seven times.

Money should mean power and opportunity, but in the hands of these women it was so often absent. Why did so many struggle to live with so much? Did the removal of need render their life meaningless? Were they riven with guilt at all they had, knowing they really should be happy? With her signature intelligence and wit, Laura Thompson tells these women’s stories – glittering and fascinating but often sad and scandalous – on a gripping search for the answer.

Thompson approaches her subject with wit, perspicacity and affection, while eschewing clichés about the eccentricities of the Mitford clan. Life in a Cold Climate is full of the sound of Mitfordian laughter; but tells also the often paradoxical and complex story beneath the smiling and ever elegant façade.

‘A brilliant study, original, perceptive, passionate’ Selina Hastings

‘Well-nigh perfect’ Diana Mosley, Literary Review

They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege, they became prominent as ‘bright young things’ in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark – and very public – differences in their outlooks came to symbolise the political polarities of a dangerous decade.

The intertwined stories of their lives – recounted in masterly fashion by Laura Thompson – hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after World War II.