The three dazzlingly beautiful, wildly rich Wyndham sisters, part of the four hundred families that made up Britain's ruling class, at the center of cultural and political life in late-Victorian/Edwardian Britain. Here are their complex, idiosyncratic lives; their opulent, privileged world; their romantic, roiling age. They were confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day, from Oscar Wilde to Henry James. They were the lovers of great men--or men of great prominence...Mary Wyndham, wilder than her wild brothers; lover of Wilfrid Blunt, confidante of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (the Balfour Declaration); married to Hugo, Lord Elcho; later the Countess of Wemyss...Madeline Adeane, the quietest and happiest of the three...and Pamela, spoiled, beautiful, of the three, possesser of the true talent, wife of the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey (later Viscount Grey), who took Britain into the First World War. They lived in a world of luxurious excess, a world of splendor at 44 Belgrave Square, and later at the even more vast Clouds, the exquisite Wiltshire house on 4,000 acres, the "house of the age," designed, in 1876, by the visionary architect, Philip Webb; the model for Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton . They were bred with the pride of the Plantagenets and raised with a fierce belief that their family was exceptional. They avoided the norm at all costs and led the way to a blending of aristocracy and art. Their group came to be called The Souls, whose members from 1885 to the 1920s included the most distinguished politicians, artists, and thinkers of their time. In Those Wild Wyndhams , Claudia Renton gives us a dazzling portrait of one of England's grandest, noblest families. Renton captures, with nuance and depth, their complex wrangling between head and heart, and the tragedy at the center of all their lives as the privilege and bliss of the Victorian age gave way to the Edwardian era, the Great War, and the passing of an opulent world. “Renton brings the subjects of John Singer Sargent’s famous painting  The Wyndham Sisters  vividly to life in this captivating collective biography. Beautiful, intelligent, witty, and liberated for their time and place, this charming trio collectively defied Victorian and Edwardian conventions.” — Booklist  “Renton’s nimble touch never fails. . . . Her portrait, no less than Sargent's, is a triumph of observation, insight, and erudition ... Renton’s descriptions are as evocative as they are informative.” — The Washington Post   “Wonderful. . . . A magnificently skillful biography of this trio of sexy sisters and the politically turbulent context of their lives. Renton demonstrates her scholarship with butterfly-winged elegance as she tells the story of a generation of Imperialist Victorians Suffused with privilege, power, money and sex that eventually ended in tragedy.” — Evening Standard (UK) “Renton never loses sight of the bigger historical picture. She sets the sisters’ fabulously privileged and sometimes troubled lives against the convulsions of home and international politics through which they lived. The result is an impeccably researched, beautifully written and compellingly readable biography.” — Daily Mail (UK) “An accomplished literary debut, a spirited and captivating history of the lives and loves of aristocrats in Victorian/Edwardian Britain. . . . Richly detailed. . . . A sparkling family portrait and riveting history.” — Kirkus   “Mesmerizing. . . . The exploits of the fictional Crawley sisters of the PBS series Downton Abbey pale in comparison to the colorful, often scandalous lives led by the real Wyndham siblings as recounted by first-time author Renton in this captivating biography.” — Library Journal CLAUDIA RENTON graduated from Trinity College, Oxford, with a First in History; she was awarded the Gibbs Book Prize for History. Before becoming a barrister, Renton was an actress in television and theater. Those Wild Wyndhams was awarded the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. She lives in London with her husband and son. One “Worse Than 100 Boys” The eldest daughter of the portrait, Mary Constance Wyndham, was born to Percy and Madeline in London in summer’s dog days on 3 August 1862 and privileged from birth. Percy, called “the Hon’ble P” by his friends, was the favored younger son of the vastly wealthy Lord Leconfield of Petworth House in Sussex, a county some fifty miles southwest of London. Percy’s occupation was holding down a family parliamentary seat in the north of England as the Conservative Member for West Cumberland. He had a kind heart and the family traits of an uncontrollable temper and an inability to dissemble. It was true of him, as was said of his father, that he had “no power of disguising his feelings, if he liked one person more than another it was simply written on his Countenance.” Percy’