One minute Mary Benson was the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a sparkling society hostess whose Lambeth Palace home attracted the likes of Henry James, Queen Victoria, Tennyson and William Gladstone who considered her the cleverest women in Europe . But the instant her husband, Edward White Benson, fell down dead while praying in church, Mary Benson became a nobody. Did she crumble? Did she heck! The woman known as Ben to her most intimate friends took Lucy Tait into her bed, and together they set up a series of homes from which Benson presided over her four unpermissably gifted children... Though Mary died in 1918, she is vivid and lively in this sympathetic biography that is often screamingly funny. Bolt s characterisations of the Benson children, not to mention their father, are spot on. When I reached the end of this entertaining book I raced to my Benson shelf, keen to linger a while in the spell of this remarkable family... One of the most riveting biographies you'll read. - Scotsman
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