Jean, Lady Hamilton, 1861-1941: Diaries of A Soldier's Wife

by Celia Lee

Overview

Jean, Lady Hamilton’s diaries remained forgotten and hidden in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London, for fifty years. The story begins with the young couples’ wedding, a dazzling bride, Jean Muir, marrying a star-struck Major Ian Hamilton. The daughter of the millionaire businessman Sir John Muir, Jean had all the money while Hamilton was penniless.

Having spent their early married years in India the Hamiltons returned and set up house in the prestigious Hyde Park area of London, also eventually buying Lullenden Manor, East Grinstead, that they purchased as a country home from Winston Churchill when he could no longer afford it.

Jean chronicled Ian’s long army career that culminated in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. The failure there ended her husband’s distinguished career and almost ended Churchill’s as he had to leave his job as First Lord of the Admiralty. From new evidence it is possible to judge how close the campaign came to succeeding and the failure seems greatly due to the absence of fresh troops not being supplied by Lord Kitchener to the peninsula.

Winston Churchill in particular was like family in the Hamiltons’ home, he used to go there and practice his speeches, and painted alongside Jean to whom he sold his first painting. Because the Churchill's were in genteel poverty, Clementine could not afford the £25 fee to enter a nursing home to give birth to her 4th child Marigold. Mary, the Lady Soames, Clementine’s daughter, supported Celia Lee in publishing the story. Marigold’s secret grave was uncovered in Kensal Green Council cemetery in 2001. The child’s life ended in tragedy just before her 3rd birthday when she died in the post-First World War Spanish influenza epidemic.

Unable to conceive, Jean adopted two children, Harry Knight, who had been abandoned on the doorstep of the creche of which she was President, and Phyllis Ursula James that she preferred to call Rosaleen and who was nicknamed Fodie in the family. Fodie's mother was unmarried and abandoned by her soldier lover during the First World War. Harry was killed in action in the Libyan desert during the Second World War. Fodie, having been sent to be educated at a private school was trapped in war-torn Europe and never returned home again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526786586
Publisher:	Pen and Sword
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Celia Lee is an author and historian.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

List of Illustrations ix

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Chapter 1 A Whirlwind Romance 1

Chapter 2 A Soldier's Wife 14

Chapter 3 Edwardian High Society 37

Chapter 4 Japan (1904-5) 61

Chapter 5 Tidworth (1905-8) 81

Chapter 6 Malta (1910-14) 107

Chapter 7 The Beginning of World War One (1914-15) 122

Chapter 8 Gallipoli: The Battle That Would Never End 136

Chapter 9 Lady Hamilton's Gallipoli Fund 165

Chapter 10 The Dardanelles Commission of Inquiry 172

Chapter 11 And Now the War is Over 209

Chapter 12 Love, Sex and Children 'Sweet Harry' - 'Dark Rosaleen' 221

Chapter 13 Jean: Artist and Poet 259

Chapter 14 Grand Ladies and Great Houses 284

Chapter 15 The Later Years 316

Chapter 16 The Last Romance 359

Postscript 368

Notes 371

Sources and Bibliography 378

Editorial Reviews

"Lee quotes extensively from her subject’s diaries to good effect."

A Blog on Winston Churchill

Celia Lee has an unrivalled knowledge of the invaluable and detailed diaries kept by Jean, Ian Hamilton’s wife, and has written a remarkable biography based on those intimate daily records of the life of a member of the Edwardian power elite.

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