00:04:22.240So Lady Hester Stanhope, I'm just curious if this is someone who you've come across, because you've written other Regency-era books.
00:04:30.400So this is someone who you were familiar with before you started doing more of a deep dive into her life?
00:04:35.020I was familiar with the very later part of her life where she was in the Middle East and created her own private army, had a citadel, was considered the queen of the desert.
00:04:48.540Really, probably the most famous adventurer and traveler in the mid-19th century.
00:04:55.900And I had always heard how eccentric and just really living according to her own rules she was.
00:05:06.260But when I began looking more closely at her, I realized her early life was absolutely just as fascinating.
00:05:14.880And it sort of is the origin story of what led her to be the Queen of the Desert.
00:05:21.120Just became enthralled by her life in London.
00:05:25.900What I found interesting in reading your book, which I have read, is I'm pretty familiar with the Regency era, just from other fiction books, but also just from my own research. And I was excited every time somebody else popped up in the book. I'm like, I know who that is. Like Georgiana shows up, her sister Harriet. Caroline of Brunswick is there. Just all these little cameos. So it really reminded me that like Hester was there at the same time as all these much more better known people.
00:05:53.180You know, she comes from an extraordinary family, very well connected. They were really, she had her uncle and her grandfather were prime minister of Britain. At one point, most every senior position in the cabinet was held by a relative, either a cousin, an uncle.
00:06:15.120It was really the Stanhope family, the Grenville family, and the Pitt family all intermarried for several generations, creating this incredible, powerful group of related people.
00:06:31.240And Lady Hester was sort of right in the middle of that.
00:06:34.440William Pitt the Younger, William Pitt the Elder were the very famous, still to this day, two of the most famous British prime ministers.
00:06:42.760So she was right at the nexus of power in London. So she was very well acquainted with
00:06:51.940practically every famous Regency person you can think of.
00:06:56.840So this novel isn't a romance novel. She has two to three different romances throughout this novel,
00:07:05.500which I find unusual. I haven't often read books where people, even in a book that's not a romance
00:07:11.000novel. Often there's just kind of one love interest, but she, because you're following
00:07:15.640her actual trajectory, she's got several love affairs. What was that like to sort of plan out0.92
00:07:20.880a book where she goes from relationship to relationship? Her life was very tumultuous
00:07:26.940based because she, in a world that was really ruled by men, she had decided early on, you can
00:07:35.760see it in her letters from an early age, that she was determined to live life by her own,
00:07:43.980according to her own inner self. She had a vision for what she wanted to be. She wanted to
00:07:50.840have a seat at the table with all her powerful male relatives. She thought she, and she clearly
00:07:56.800was as brilliant and as eloquent and talented as they were. And she just refused to relinquish
00:08:06.460that dream. She could have had a very comfortable and prominent role in society had she chosen a0.84
00:08:15.860conventional marriage. She just wouldn't do that. She really had a vision for herself and it led her1.00
00:08:26.860to have great triumphs, but it also led to great tragedies. She's just such an interesting character
00:08:33.720because of that. I think she reflects sort of not a storybook heroine, but someone with real life
00:08:41.480vulnerabilities, desires, dreams, and had the courage and the conviction to keep true to those,
00:08:50.660even when she was sort of in the depths of losing her dreams, you know, being forced
00:08:57.880to relinquish the power she was looking for. It's just, she's really quite an extraordinary
00:09:05.240person. You mentioned, I think just now, letters. So what sorts of resources were you able to use
00:09:14.060when you were researching letters and diaries and things like that were available for you to
00:09:19.400access? Yeah, the wonderful thing about Hester is because she comes from such a prominent family,
00:09:25.920there is a lot of background material. Her letters were saved. She loved letter writing.
00:09:32.320She corresponded with family and with friends, and her niece in the late 1800s published a
00:09:39.800collection of the letters. So it was really, I had a chance to sort of read her voice and get a sense
00:09:46.700of who she was. She was very, very funny and could be very sarcastic, had a great sense of humor,
00:09:56.340I think, a dry sense of humor. She could also be caustic and abrasive. She certainly was a very1.00
00:10:05.520strong personality, and that sort of resonated in the letters and helped me, as well as just
00:10:12.640reading the history and the facts of her timeline that I was using for the book. It really helped
00:10:21.440me get a sense of since I was going to have to create her dialogue and make her into a,
00:10:29.880imagine her in this book and try and make her as true as I could to how I felt she really was.
00:10:39.660That seems like such an interesting sort of task to do to take a person who, and it's great that
00:10:46.560she was, that her letters really show her personality and what she was like. And then
00:10:50.500you kind of know what the events are that you need to include in your book because it's it's a
00:10:54.360biographical fiction so just trying to to match that all up but then at the same time make it a
00:11:00.220novel and make a character that people can relate to and can understand i when i first um was talking
00:11:07.280to my editor about this project i had real reservations on i this seemed you know a fictional
00:11:14.600biography, that sounds like an oxymoron. But the more I read about her life, the more the
00:11:22.700storyteller in me thought, oh my gosh, some of these facts are, you couldn't make them up. As
00:11:29.140you said, all the people that she was coming in contact with and had either love affairs with,
00:11:35.780or had dramatic moments in her life. And I thought, this is just such an interesting
00:11:42.200challenge. And as I said, I was leery about it because I felt I really had to feel I liked her,
00:11:49.500you know, and I wasn't sure in the beginning that I was sort of have a bond. And the more I read
00:11:55.880about her, even despite some of her craziness, I really came to admire her and really be rooting
00:12:03.400for her. And I think that helped me create her as a person. I just felt she was so interesting,
00:12:11.680so courageous in a time that really didn't give that option to women. And yet she just
00:12:19.860reached out and grabbed it. I think it will resonate with modern readers because
00:12:25.420it's not just dry history. Here's a woman trying to find her place in the world0.61
00:12:30.800against incredible odds. She carved out, not without tragedy, she carved out a role for1.00
00:12:40.020herself. And ultimately, I see that as a great triumph, even though, as I said, there are many
00:12:48.120tragedies in her life. Yeah, I think every time I think I sort of know what the Regency era was
00:12:56.480like, I learned about somebody like Hester Stanhope. And I realized, no, everyone wasn't,
00:13:00.800you know, it wasn't just everybody following the rules of society and doing exactly what
00:13:05.420they're supposed to do. There was, but although most people were, which is why she stood out at
00:13:10.320the time. I want to talk a bit about her family. You mentioned before, you know, the prime ministers
00:13:15.500and things like that. Can you explain the title of the book, The Diamond of London, what the diamond
00:13:20.020is? It's, it plays a role in the book. And I think we can talk about it without spoiling the story.
00:13:23.940I think so, too. Actually, that really was one of the stories that captivated me. Her great-great-grandfather was, in a sense, a rebel, too. He decided he was going to go to India to make his—he came—he was well-to-do, a merchant, and decided he was going to go to India and take advantage of commerce there and see if he could make his fortune.
00:13:49.860He was so good at what he did. He was a gadfly to the East India Company, which is the most powerful trading company probably in the world. And they ended up hiring him. Well, somehow in his role, he came across this very large diamond. And today it is probably next to the Hope Diamond, the most famous diamond in the world.
00:14:17.140The story isn't clear how he acquired it.
00:14:20.000It could be by hook or by crook, but he brings this diamond back to England.
00:14:26.220It makes him a wealthy man, fabulously wealthy.
00:14:30.020He sells it to the regent of France, who then puts it in the coronation crown.
00:14:36.920It becomes known as the regent diamond.
00:14:39.240Today it's in the Louvre, and you can go see it.
00:14:42.940So the diamond gives him the money to make his family just fabulously wealthy. And that's where they begin to his children intermarry with the Pitts and the Stanhopes.0.91
00:14:56.620And so The Diamond is really this brilliant story in her family background. It sort of, I took it as a metaphor, these hard-edged, glittery people who are just sort of stand out from the crowd. They just, they have a certain presence, a certain charisma, we would call it today.0.94
00:15:22.520I mean, her cousin, one of them, Sir Sidney Smith, is a renowned war hero who keeps Napoleon from conquering Jerusalem.
00:15:34.500Another cousin is called the half-mad Lord.
00:20:04.240Well, that is where creative and artistic license comes through. But her first, I mean, well, actually, second, really, love interest was her cousin, the half-mad Lord. And he was absolutely, I read biographies on him, and he was a titled aristocrat, but he had run away to sea to be in the Navy and had a very hardscrabble life.
00:20:32.220He didn't get on with his own father, but inherited the title in his late teens.
00:21:00.000He bankrolled a number of big prize fights, and he just loved that rough and tumble world,
00:21:07.500and he didn't really fit into the aristocratic world. They all sort of shunned him. He frightened
00:21:13.300them, you know, because he was so just different. So it seemed to me, and Hester was always pushing
00:21:20.960the boundaries too, it seemed to me one of the reasons she really liked him because he was
00:21:29.220outrageous. And it appealed to her sense of, you know, to hell with the rules. I think she
00:21:37.420encouraged him. I mean, I think he encouraged her to go for her dreams, you know, because he just
00:21:43.520did what he felt like doing. And it was an interesting relationship. She was smart enough
00:21:49.460to know that if they had married, and there's a question of whether he did propose because he felt,
00:21:56.620well, we get along well. We'd let each other do what we wanted. I think she sensed they would
00:22:03.880have burned each other to a crisp. They were just too strong for each of them, too strong
00:22:09.820personalities. It probably would have led to disaster. But it was an interesting time in her
00:22:17.580life when she was with him. I just love seeing those sorts of sides of, again, I keep saying
00:22:24.740the Regency era, but that's when it takes place. And it's such a sort of well-trod era for fiction.
00:22:30.580So I love kind of like poking into these corners and learning about kind of other things that are
00:22:34.700happening besides the balls and the gowns and things. I mean, that's what I love about the era
00:22:40.500is when you think about it, it's the birth of the modern world. Society was really being turned
00:22:46.140upside down, both in politics, in music, in art, in science. Certainly you had the industrial
00:22:53.040revolution. Society was just in a flux. It was sort of tradition being challenged by new ideas
00:23:00.840in every field. And I find it a wonderful time to set a novel because there's that change frightens
00:23:11.020people. And so there's this simmering tension really in all sorts of aspects of life there.
00:23:19.920And I think, you know, you had the first feminist manifestos being written by Mary Wollstonecraft. So women were beginning to question why are these strictures on us? Why can't we be writers or artists or scientists or whatever?
00:23:35.080However, you're really seeing this bubbling up of, no, change is, you know, things are going to change. And I think that's a really interesting sort of background to try and get into a Regency novel.
00:23:51.360And so Hester herself, I mean, just based on what you were just saying, do you think if she had been born 100 years earlier, she could have lived the same life she did? Or was it really because of the opportunities that she was, because of the advances in politics and philosophy and science that there was, she was able to do more things?
00:24:13.860You know, I think probably because there was a stirring. But, you know, when you look at history, it's interesting. There are women who have been strong and carved out roles in earlier times, too. We just haven't heard enough about them.
00:24:32.320And, you know, in sort of reading about George and thing, I realized, you know, there was a family, the Howe family, where the brothers were all military men.
00:24:44.120They actually, they headed the British forces in the American Revolution.
00:24:49.260And the sister was really the powerful one.
00:24:51.800She was at home orchestrating all the politics to keep her brothers in seats of power in the military.
00:24:59.100And you don't really read about that very much. So I think women, if really strong women have found ways, but I do think the Regency began to encourage more people.
00:25:13.800You had, you know, Mary Shelley, you know, establishing herself as a writer and, you know, eloping with the poet Shelley, doing things that really defied convention.
00:25:29.160So it's the Regency really is sort of, I think, the flowering of that.
00:25:33.180and do you think for the things that hester like the real life hester that she was able to do
00:25:40.180in her life someone else in a different family even of her same class might not have been able
00:25:46.060to if there was more of a controlling hand sort of guiding what she was doing if she had been
00:25:50.520forced into a marriage she didn't want or if so how do you think her family sort of
00:25:55.560in what ways did they support or get in her way do you think i think absolutely being from a very
00:26:03.160prominent family, gave her entree into situations and possibilities that most other women wouldn't
00:26:15.920have had in that time. The fact that her uncle, William Pitt, the younger, never married, he was
00:26:23.660a workaholic, really, and came to depend on her. She became his private secretary, really, and
00:26:30.400sort of, she adored him and she really became his helpmate, really. She was the one who created
00:26:42.480the dinners and the politicians. She learned how to handle politicians. She took a lot of0.90
00:26:48.180pressure off him. And I think because of the family's wealth, there was no pressure on her
00:26:54.520to marry to align fortunes together. It's interesting. The family was very sort of
00:27:04.000hands-off in not pressuring her to marry, I think because she was doing so much to support her uncle
00:27:13.880until he passed away. So yeah, the family connections and family prominence certainly
00:27:22.940gave her more freedom to exercise her dreams.
00:27:31.020And so when you were first considering doing this project, well, you said at first you
00:27:35.320were sort of dubious about the concept of doing a biographical novel.
00:27:39.640Did you always know you were going to focus on this lesser known first part of her life?
00:27:46.640And because it's bookended so well, I won't sort of give spoilers, you know, but I don't think you could possibly do her life in one book, her whole life in one book.
00:27:59.940It's really very clearly two separate times, you know.
00:28:05.320She definitely, there is a transition that is just sort of a natural first and second part of her.
00:28:13.920And it's just because it was set in London, because she's really forming herself in this time period.
00:28:25.180By the time she's in the second half of her life, it truly is, you know, I'm doing exactly as I want.
00:28:34.460There are just no more questions about whether I'm going to obey the rules.
00:28:40.620and and how she comes to that to me was just really fascinating well that's true and there's
00:28:47.940also a certain tension in the in this first part of her life where you think what is what's not
00:28:53.860what's she going to get away with but what's she going to be able to do how is her life going to
00:28:57.880turn out and then in the second if i don't know if you're planning this but if someone does write
00:29:02.160has written a book about the second part i think that would almost be more like an indiana jones
00:29:06.040adventure. It's just kind of a person who, who knows how they are doing some stuff.
00:29:10.480I think that's exactly it. I think what fascinated me was the first half of her life
00:29:16.380is when she made choices, made really mental choices and how, what made her do that is just
00:29:24.960sort of fascinating. Looking at the, um, the events she was involved with, the people she
00:29:31.780was involved with, that's what really fascinated me. There are many times where she reaches
00:29:38.360a point and she can go one way or another. And what sort of made her decide to do certain things,
00:29:48.800I just found really, really interesting. And so this episode is coming out the same week
00:29:55.820that your book is being published. Do you have any events or anything planned around the publication?
00:30:01.780I'm doing a number of other interviews. I have a couple of bookstores in my local area in
00:30:09.460Connecticut and obviously social media. I'll be blogging on some of the history and things that
00:30:18.120tickled my fancy when I was writing the book, all the little nuggets of information I decided.
00:30:27.180Oh, actually, you just mentioned, so you'll be blogging. So that's on your website or where
00:30:31.020do you do that? I do that at The Word Wenches is a group blog with a number of other historical
00:30:39.760writers. It's a great name. We've been around. We're probably one of the oldest group blogs.
00:30:47.760We've been around for like 15 years. So it's a fun group and definitely come visit us.
00:30:55.640For sure. And listeners, I will put a link to that in the show notes so you can all
00:30:59.080find that so you can see what you're doing yeah because i always find it so interesting the
00:31:03.840combination of what what history gets put in a fiction novel and what is a great anecdote but
00:31:11.360just doesn't fit that you know it's just because you're writing a novel you can't write every
00:31:15.920detail you can't you can't i do on my website i have a section called diversions and i try and do
00:31:23.720little background nuggets on history that I find interesting and that sort of complement
00:31:31.780the books that I'm writing. So people can take a look at that and explore.
00:31:40.480Sort of the wider world. Yeah. Is it sometimes hard to, you have a really fun moment or an
00:31:46.500anecdote that you wish you could put in the book, but it just doesn't help the story. It
00:31:51.380doesn't help the fictional narrative so you have to take it out it's you know it there's always a
00:31:57.440process of okay how does the story arc work and what are you what what what is what really adds
00:32:06.500to the development of of the the tension of the character but for me though in doing research
00:32:14.400discovering all those little things are so much fun because they, they, they just help you get a
00:32:21.500sense, an overall sense of, of a person or an event and whether they actually get written into
00:32:29.080the story. They, they just help me visualize and, and imagine the person's life a little more
00:32:36.860just colorful. They add color, I think, and texture to just reading a biography of
00:32:46.220she was here, she was there, she did this, she did that. It's the little things you discover
00:32:53.880that really make it come alive. I agree. I think come alive is a good way to put it because it's
00:33:00.600history sometimes, not in your book, but it can just feel sort of like this foreign land where
00:33:07.000you just don't really understand what's happening. But those little quirks and those little details
00:33:11.280really make it feel like, oh no, these were real people. Like this was a real story. These are
00:33:15.560events that you can relate to in some way. Yeah. That's sort of what I love to do with
00:33:23.780my novels i i happen to find i've been a history buff i i can't explain why even as a little kid
00:33:30.800i was fascinated by the past i loved reading books on king arthur and what have you it it and it to
00:33:38.760me it is all about the people and it's it's i i really i always when people say oh history it's
00:33:46.780so dry. And I want to say, no, no, it's not. It's the people and what they were doing and the
00:33:55.380discoveries and the clashes are absolutely fascinating. But you're right. A lot of times
00:34:02.440it's written in a very dry, boring sort of way. And I think if you can make it come alive for
00:34:11.060readers and get them to say, oh my gosh, this is, we, we see where, you know, we're here because of
00:34:18.600what happened in the past. All of our, you know, society is, is shaped by events from the past
00:34:25.340and they're, they're real and they're messy and they're chaotic and they're, they're exciting
00:34:31.140and they're colorful. And I, I think I just love trying to convey that to readers.
00:34:38.760And that definitely comes across in this book.