In 1999, the BBC adapted Stella Tillyard's book as a six-part miniseries called Aristocrats.The Lennox sisters had two brothers who lived to adulthood, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond (1735–1806), and Lord George Lennox (1737–1805), as well as two others who died in infancy. While four Lennox sisters lived to mature adulthood and a fifth lived until she was 19, three others died in childhood: Louisa Margaret (1725–1728), Anne (1726–1727), and Margaret (1739–1741). As a young woman, she fell ill with a wasting disease-possibly tuberculosis-and her older siblings sent her first to Lyons Gate and then to France in a vain effort to recover her strength. Her parents died in 17 when she was only a year old, and Cecilia, along with her sisters Louisa and Sarah, was raised by her sister Emily in Ireland. George Napier, by whom she had eight children.Ĭecily Margaret Lennox, sometimes called Cecilia, was born in 1750. In 1781, Lady Sarah contracted a much happier second marriage with Hon. She mixes impeccable research, a sharp eye for detail, and a writing style that's both precise and lively to produce a biography of a clan that doubles as a. Lady Sarah embarked on an adulterous affair with Lord William Gordon and bore him a daughter, called Louisa Bunbury, in 1768. Author Stella Tillyard gives a second life to these 18th-century aristocrats, whose extended family included some of the most significant and colorful British political figures of the era. She caught the eye of the young Prince of Wales, later George III, who after ascending the throne hinted that he was considering her as a wife but never proposed. Sarah Lennox was raised in Ireland by her sister Emily, in accordance with the provisions of her father's will, her parents having died when she was six years old.

Aristocrats by stella tillyard