ENID: THE SCANDALOUS HIGH SOCIETY LIFE OF THE FORMIDABLE 'LADY KILLMORE' By Robert Wainwright

 This was great fun to read, although Enid, Countess of Kenmare, really didn't have an easy life. Wainwright's rather breathless and admiring book gives a glimpse into the lives of the jetset in The Riviera and South Africa, and the lives of famous artists, such as Somerset Maugham. I much preferred reading about Enid to reading about Priscilla, although some have complained that she was a hard-hearted social climber. She didn't strike me that way.

Christened 'Countess Killmore' by Somerset Maugham because she saw off four husbands, beautiful and outgoing Enid came from the wealthy Australian wine-growing Lindemann family. When she was very young, she caught the eye of an American millionare, Roderick Cameron. He married her, and took her to the glamorous world of New York society, a far cry from Sydney. When he died two years later, he left her most of his money, and she returned to Australia with her young son Rory.

Australia proved too parochial and boring for Enid after New York, so she bravely set off for Europe alone. Here, she did her duty during The First World War, driving an ambulance. Glamorous and wealthy, Enid became rather a 'nuisance' amongst the British officers after the war, and she agreed to an arranged marriage! Apparently, this was not uncommon in those days! She married Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier-General Frederick Cavendish, an impoverished aristocrat. Neither was faithful, but when someone dared her to sleep with Cavendish's regiment, she did just that! She had two children with Cavenish, Pat and Caryll.

The next husband was the shipbuilding millionare Marmaduke Furness, who divorced Thelma after her affair with the Prince of Wales. Marmaduke swept her off her feet, but turned out to be rather a monster, cruel to Enid and his step-children, and became addicted to drugs. Although Enid had handed over her fortune to him, she somehow managed to fall on her feet again, and acquire a stunning house on the Riviera, La Fiorentina. Here she became a prisoner after the war broke out with a drug-addicted husband, but she managed to hide Allied airmen, showing great courage. After he died, she managed to get to England. She had a long battle with Thelma over the fortune - Thelma even accused her of killing her husband with no evidence whatsoever.

She had had a brief love affair with the fourth husband, Viscount Castlerosse, Earl of Kenmare, after the Great War, and he fell head-over-heels in love with her, although it's hard to tell what her feelings were. She definitely liked this husband the best, though! When she became pregnant to him at 51, she was persuaded by her weird hypocritical Catholic mother-in-law to have an abortion so that his brother could inherit the title! Tragically, the child was a son, and the Earl didn't have any children. The titles became extinct not long later.

Enid eventually divided her time between La Fiorentina and South Africa, where she bred racehorses. Her daughter Pat's books look interesting.

Amazingly, I got this book free nearby, but it's been on the shelves for over a year. I read this for Rose City Reader's TBR 23 for '23 Challenge.