This short biography of Henrietta Howard Countess of Suffolk is a reasonably interesting account of a woman who although well-known in her day has largely slipped from the sight of history, even amongst those who are interested in the Georgian period. It recounts the upheavals of her childhood, her tumultuous marriage, and her determined attempt to secure a place at the court of the Hanoverian kings. There is some insightful material about the characters of George I and George II, and the politics of the time.

Henrietta became the long term mistress of George II and benefitted from that in material terms, although it appears to have been a difficult role to perform. Some well-known people of the time such as Pope, Swift and John Gay pass through the pages. If there is one problem with this book it is that Henrietta, although plainly an attractive and cultured woman with a gift for hospitality and friendship, is now not particularly interesting in herself at the distance of three hundred years; she did not have any great influence on events nor a character of particular distinctiveness. This book is therefore best read as an account of the times rather than an exploration of a particular personality. ( )

In a reply to a besotted admirer, the Earl of Peterborough, Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk wrote: ‘Consider, my lord, you have but one heart, and then consider whether you have a right to dispose of it, is there not a lady at Paris who is convinced that nobody has it but herself? Did you not bequeath it to another lady at Turin? At Venice you disposed of it to six or seven, and you again parted with it at Naples and in Sicily. I believe, my Lord, that one who disposes of his heart in so profuse a manner is like a juggler, who seems to fling away a piece of money but still has it in his own keeping.’ Tracy Borman concludes, in this as in so much of her life, that Henrietta was a woman of reason in an Age of Reason.

She survived poverty and domestic abuse. Mr Howard had treated her ‘with Tyrany; with Cruelty, my life in Danger’ and she demanded, ‘then am I not free?’ ‘Self preservation is ye first law of Nature, are Married Women then ye only part of human nature yt must not follow it?’ She navigated the machinations of court life, politics and being pulled and manipulated between her royal lover King George II and her mistress the Queen. Caroline winked at this arrangement, as Lord Hervey pointed out, ‘for fear of making room for a successor whom he might really love, and that might get the better of her.’ As a courtier she was agile and discrete; Pope said ‘that Lady means to do good, and does no harm, which is a vast deal for a Courtier’. There are several love affairs here – between Henrietta and her friends John Gay, Swift and Pope, of her dear Marble Hill and then the great love of her life and second husband, George Berkeley.

‘She has all her sense as perfect as ever,’ Horace Walpole said, ‘wonderful in conversation ... which unlike the aged is as minutely retentive of what happened two years ago, as of the events of her youth.’ On her death Lady Suffolk left a witty collection of letters (eventually) to the nation and her beautiful house (after her nephew’s death) to her female heirs and relations. Although the ‘provision was highly unusual, it was typical of a woman who had fought so long for independence in a world dominated by men.’