Minutes February book: The Bolter

The Bolter

by Frances Osborne

(chosen by Fairlie)

Theme: Women behaving badly




I chose this book, as I have previously read it and really enjoyed it. With a family connection to that era in Kenyan history, I am fascinated by all the writings about members of the Happy Valley set.

About the author:

Frances Osborne is the author of three books. Her first biography, Lilla's Feast (2004), was about her great-grandmother who wrote a cookery book in a Japanese internment camp in China during the Second World War. The Bolter (2008) is her second biography and was a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller  Her first novel, Park Lane, is set in a London Mansion in 1914 and will be published this year.

(general biographical detail from the author's own website)

What the publisher says about the book:

'This is a truly astonishing book. Frances Osborne has not just brought to life a dizzyingly rich and scandalous slice of social history, she has produced a tragic and deeply moving tale as well. It is far more gripping than any novel I have read for years' Antony Beevor 

On Friday 25th May, 1934, a forty-one-year-old woman walked into the lobby of Claridge's Hotel to meet the nineteen-year-old son whose face she did not know. Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man. 

An inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter, painted by William Orpen, and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Sackville went on to divorce a total of five times, yet died with a picture of her first love by her bed. Her struggle to reinvent her life with each new marriage left one husband murdered and branded her the 'high priestess' of White Mischief's bed-hopping Happy Valley in Kenya. 

Sackville's life was so scandalous that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne. Now, Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville's road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century.

What we discussed about the book:

• Was Idina a bolter or a boltee? What role did her husband's behaviour play in her decision to leave?
• Is there sufficient evidence that Sakville is Mitford's Bolter?
• Was the Edwardian 'system' of fidelity in a marriage more workable that current concepts of monogamous marriages?
• To what extent was the behaviour exhibited class driven?
• What was Alice's role in the Jos Hay murder?
• Why is Idina's story interesting to us?
• What is the author's attitude toward her great-grandmother?
• Did Idina have her own moral code? e.g. not stealing a husband?
• What were Idina's most redeeming features?
• What were the most shocking aspects of her behaviour?
• How did Alice get away with (attempted) murder in Paris?
• What would Idina have been like as an old woman? 
• What was the influence of Idina's own mother's behaviour on her?

And then we were sidetracked into:

• What is the definition of 'women behaving badly'? Does it change depending on a woman's age? 
• What is a 'man behaving badly'? What behaviour is unforgivable in a man?
• The tradition of sending small children to boarding school in England.
• Sheila Milbank - Australian 'it' girl, and her role in bringing Idina and David together 
• How would today's psychology label Idina? How would today's media represent her?
• Is a 'bolter' a more derogatory term than a 'bounder'? What is the appropriate male label for a bolter?

In other news, we discussed:

• Old telephone exchanges - how operators used to connect the calls
• The Hep A from frozen berries debacle
• Various forms of Asian gastros
• The class system in Cambodia

Ratings:
Range: 7 to 8.5
Average: 7.69

Next book:  A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker's Melbourne by Robyn Annear