Adrian Searle

A biography of the British woman who left behind life in a brothel to become a baroness in a French chateau, and perhaps a killer.

She was the daughter of an alcoholic Isle of Wight smuggler. Much of her childhood was spent in the island's workhouse. Yet Sophie Dawes threw off the shackles of her downbeat formative years to become one of the most talked-about personalities in post-revolutionary France.

It was the ultimate rags to riches story that would see her become the mistress of the fabulously wealthy French aristocrat Louis Henri de Bourbon, destined to be the last Prince of Condé. Her total subjugation of the aging prince, her obsessive desire for a position among the highest echelon of French royalist society following the Bourbon restoration, and her designs upon a hefty chunk of Louis Henri's vast fortune would lead to scandal, sensation, and then infamy.

The Infamous Sophie Dawes examines her island background before tracing her extraordinary rise from obscurity to becoming a baroness who ruled the prince's château at Chantilly as its unofficial queen and intrigued with the King of the French to get what she wanted.

But how far did she go? The book examines the mysterious death of Louis Henri in 1830 and uses newly discovered evidence in a bid to determine the part Sophie may have played in his demise.

"Mouthwatering scandal, dangerous affairs, this story has the lot!" —Books Monthly

Pen & Sword History

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