Persephone Books discussion

I have one chapter left! I thought this was a really interesting read, and it was enlightening to hear about WWI from Julian's perspective. It's sad that he died when he was so young...and it also seemed like there wasn't a whole lot of biographical material on him. It seemed at times to be a biography of Ettie! She sounded like quite the character.
It's funny--I'm reading Five Sisters by James Fox (a biography of the Langhorne sisters), and Ettie appeared in it! Nancy Astor was acquainted with her and it sounds like they didn't get along very well (maybe Ettie didn't really get along with women?). John Revelstoke, Arthur Balfour and George Curzon were also mentioned. Interesting that I had never heard of these people before and they were in two books I was reading!

Gina wrote: "I have one chapter left! I thought this was a really interesting read, and it was enlightening to hear about WWI from Julian's perspective. It's sad that he died when he was so young...and it also ..."

You might want to continue with The Viceroy's Daughters, a biography of George Curzon's daughters by Anne de Courcy.

I found 'Julian Grenfell' fascinating. I have read a lot about the First World War and the 1920s and 30s, but very little about the 'naughty nineties' and the years from 1900 to 1914. It did seem more about his mother than him but I liked that! She was so interesting.

I thought the fact that the author knew Ettie might have influenced that. He doesn't go into the details of the relationship - only mentions their first meeting - but I looked him up on Wikipedia. Ettie's granddaughter was Nicholas Mosley's first wife (Monica's daughter, i.e. Julian's niece). Ettie died 4 or 5 years after the young couple were married. I can imagine him 'falling for' an old lady who was probably still charming in the way that some old ladies can be. And then of course he had access to all the family papers, which would have contained much more about her because her life was so much longer than Julian's.

Incidentally, Nicholas Mosley himself was the son of British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. His mother was Cynthia Curzon, one of the daughters of George Curzon. Diana Mitford was his stepmother. Being Oswald Mosley's son must have caused some problems for him as a young man, although Nicholas fought in World War II and it sounds like he was openly opposed to his father.