Adventuress: The Life and Loves of Lucy, Lady Houston

Lucy, Lady Houston’s extraordinary life is revealed here in full for the first time. In the 1930s, Lady Houston was one of the richest women in England and a household name. Chiefly remembered now for her involvement with the development of the Spitfire aircraft and for being a prominent suffragette, this extraordinary biography tells a more complete story: how she acquired her enormous wealth, and how she spent it. From an unpromising start as the teenage mistress of a prosperous brewer, Lucy leveraged the wealth and status of successive lovers until she gained sole control of her third husband’s vast fortune. Not content with the normal pursuits of the affluent, Lucy turned her attention to conservative politics by buying and running her own newspaper. This book draws on unpublished archival material to reveal the many activities she financed, including the first flight over Mount Everest, secret weapons research, attempts to expose Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald as a Soviet agent, and a last-ditch plan to prevent Edward VIII’s abdication. Lucy’s irrepressible self-confidence, her eccentric extravagance, and her interactions with famous figures, such as Winston Churchill, Oswald Mosley and T.E. Lawrence, make Adventuress a fascinating addition to the social and political history of the fast-changing times in which she lived. AUTHOR: Teresa Crompton is an author and historian, who has recently worked as an administrator at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. She has written several books and has a PhD in history from Sheffield Hallam University. 20 b/w illustrations