PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Dame Gillian Wagner has been Chair of Barnardo's and Carnegie UK. She is the author of Thomas Coram, Gent; The Chocolate Conscience; Barnardo and Children of the Empire.
This book is a work of art: Ellen Palmer's diary, on which it is based, offers a fascinating glimpse into mid-Victorian high society - and into the mind of a beautiful, intelligent and self-aware young woman gifted with a trenchant turn of phrase --Anne de Courcy, author of The Viceroy's Daughters Engrossing...a great piece of social history --Katharine McMahon, author of The Rose of Sebastopol This is a compelling record of a woman stultified both by her family and even more by the rigid hierarchy of Victorian Society. I know of no other record which so vividly charts the failed efforts at social climbing by a family that used their daughter, Ellen Palmer, as the wedge whereby to prise open the door upwards. They failed. The diarist herself emerges as a mass of contradictions, vivacious and musically accomplished, vain and strong-willed, snobbish and also lacking in judgement when it came to men. But other traits, like her journey to the Crimea, anticipate what womanhood was to become in the next century. --Sir Roy Strong
