Daisy Goodwin – författare

MY LAST DUCHESS is the debut novel from Daisy Goodwin, the script writer of the epic ITV Sunday night drama VICTORIA,. A rich, rewarding love story, perfect for readers of Georgette Heyer, and fans of VICTORIA, DOWNTON ABBEY and THE CROWN.'Sparkling and thoroughly engaging' Sunday Times'Deliciously classy. An intelligent pleasure, full of exquisite period detail' Kate MosseCora Cash has grown up in a world in which money unlocks every door. Her coming-out ball promises to be the most opulent of the gilded 1890s, a fitting debut for New York's 'princess'. Yet her fortune cannot buy her the one thing she craves -- the freedom to choose her own destiny. For Cora's mother has her heart on a title for her daughter, and in England -- where they are bound, to find Cora a husband. When Cora loses her heart to a man she barely knows, she soon realises that she is playing a game she does not fully understand -- and that her future happiness is the prize.

‘Other children had imaginary friends; I had a fictional mother, a siren from the southern hemisphere.’Daisy Goodwin’s mother left home when Daisy was five and embarked upon a bohemian life in Swanage. Daisy was brought up by her respectable father and her meticulous German stepmother and adored her glamorous mother from afar. She made sense of her mother’s difference and of her absence through her imaginings about the family’s unstable South American history. It was only when Daisy underwent a deep depression following the birth of her own daughter, that she felt the weight of her mother’s abandonment and the burden of her family’s past take root in her own life.Daisy’s family, on her mother’s side, is as eccentric and wayward as any family could be. Her Irish forebears – a Catholic and a Protestant – were driven from their southern Irish home and emigrated to Argentina. Their history there is one of vast wealth rapidly acquired and just as rapidly lost, of gambling, of horses, of suicides and breakdowns, of isolation in the bleak expanses of the Pampas and of the heights of high society. In this extraordinary memoir, the contrasts between Argentina and England serve as a metaphor for the clashes in the author’s life, caught between two parents, two countries and two cultures. Intensely personal, funny and unsentimental, ‘Silver River’ explores universal questions about families, identity and growing up in a way that has never been done before.

This glorious debut novel by a latter-day Edith Wharton is a deliciously literate and compelling story of a beautiful, naive young American heiress at the turn of the twentieth century who is ill-prepared for aristocratic decadence when she marries an English duke.

From the first flush of love, through courtship and vows of eternal fidelity, to serving the writs and drowning your sorrows, 'The Nation's Favourite Love Poems' will meet all your romantic requirements. In this selection of 100 popular poems, poets of every age consider that most universal of themes: love. As well as traditional lovers' favourites such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'How do I love thee?' and Shakespeare's 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' there are contemporary voices such as Adrian Mitchell, Wendy Cope and John Fuller, whose erudite yet salacious 'Valentine' would melt the most fridgid heart. There are even poems for those more melancholic moments, Hardy's haunting 'After a Journey', for example, and Larkin's poignant 'Love Songs in Age'. So, wherever you are in the tunnel of love, dip into this book of poetry and you will be reassured to discover that at one time or another a poet has been there before you.

From the script writer of the epic TV drama, VICTORIA comes Daisy Goodwin's THE FORTUNE HUNTER for readers of MY LAST DUCHESS (THE AMERICAN HEIRESS) and any novel by Georgette Heyer*A Richard and Judy Book Club title*'Pure, light-hearted, unpretentious entertainment' Sunday ExpressIn 1875, Sisi, the Empress of Austria is the woman that every man desires and every woman envies. Beautiful, athletic and intelligent, Sisi has everything - except happiness. Bored with the stultifying etiquette of the Hapsburg Court and her dutiful but unexciting husband, Franz Joseph, Sisi comes to England to hunt. She also comes looking for excitement and finds it in the dashing form of Captain Bay Middleton, the only man in Europe who can outride her. Ten years younger than her and engaged to the rich and devoted Charlotte, Bay has everything to lose by falling for a woman who can never be his. But Bay and the Empress are as reckless as each other, and their mutual attraction is a force that cannot be denied.

You've seen her on the screen, now read her story...From the creator of the ITV Sunday night drama, VICTORIA, now in its second year, comes the novel by Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling MY LAST DUCHESS and THE FORTUNE HUNTER.In June 1837, the eighteen-year-old Victoria wakes up to find that she is Queen of the most powerful nation in the world. Can this tiny girl prevail against the men who believe that women are too hysterical to rule? And what are the secrets behind her famously passionate relationship with her husband, Albert?From one of our greatest historical writers comes a new take on one of our most beloved monarchs... Victoria as you've never seen her before.

New York Times bestselling author Daisy Goodwin returns with a story of the scandalous love affair between the most celebrated opera singer of all time and one of the richest men in the world.'An extraordinary, vivid, and skilful re-imagining of a modern Greek legend' - Victoria HislopIn the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas is known simply as la divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she's the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world. Yet her fame has been hard won: raised in Nazi-occupied Greece by a mother who mercilessly exploited her, Maria learned early in life how to protect herself.When she meets the fabulously rich shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, her isolation melts away. For the first time in her life, she believes she's found a man who sees the woman rather than the legendary soprano. Desperately in love, Onassis introduces her to a life of unbelievable luxury, mixing with celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.And then, suddenly, it's over. The international press announce that Onassis will marry the most famous woman in the world, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, leaving Maria to pick up the pieces.'I gulped it down... the brilliantly persuasive portrayal of a woman negotiating the demands of her art with an intense emotional life is so compelling' - Elizabeth Buchan

New York Times bestselling author Daisy Goodwin returns with a story of the scandalous love affair between the most celebrated opera singer of all time and one of the richest men in the world.'An extraordinary, vivid, and skilful re-imagining of a modern Greek legend' - Victoria HislopIn the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas is known simply as la divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she's the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world. Yet her fame has been hard won: raised in Nazi-occupied Greece by a mother who mercilessly exploited her, Maria learned early in life how to protect herself.When she meets the fabulously rich shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, her isolation melts away. For the first time in her life, she believes she's found a man who sees the woman rather than the legendary soprano. Desperately in love, Onassis introduces her to a life of unbelievable luxury, mixing with celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.And then, suddenly, it's over. The international press announce that Onassis will marry the most famous woman in the world, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, leaving Maria to pick up the pieces.'I gulped it down... the brilliantly persuasive portrayal of a woman negotiating the demands of her art with an intense emotional life is so compelling' - Elizabeth Buchan