Scandalous Lady W

Hallie Rubenhold is the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling and Baillie Gifford prize-winning author of The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. A renowned social historian whose expertise lies in revealing stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history, she is also the author of The Covent Garden Ladies, which was the inspiration behind BBC TV’s Harlots. Her acclaimed biographical work, Lady Worsley’s Whim, was dramatized by the BBC and reissued as The Scandalous Lady W. Her most recent work of non-fiction, Story of a Murder: the Wives, the Mistress and Dr Crippen, explores the history of Crippen’s victims in turn of the century England and America. She has also written two acclaimed novels, Mistress of My Fate and The French Lesson, which give voice to the women written out by eighteenth-century literature.She lives in London with her husband. Meet her @HallieRubenhold.

The story of the Worsley divorce has never been revealed before, and Hallie Rubenhold tells it with panache. Her account of the elopement is gripping but this is far more than an 18th-century bodice-ripper. Rubenhold combines narrative skill with historical expertise, and she traces the knife-edge that women walked between social success and public disgrace with subtlety and assurance