Friday, November 21, 2008

SME's Book of the Month

The Disappearing Duke: The Improbably Tale of an Eccentric English Family by Tom Freeman-Keel and Andrew Crofts

"A true tale of fratricide, mock burials, clandestine marriages, fraud, bribery, perjury, blackmail, the financing of Benjamin Disreali's ascent to Prime Minister, and a court case that the British aristrocracy feared."

For $5, I couldn't resist this one. It's the story of "the burrowing duke", William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, who hired England's best architects and engineers to construct an enormous subterranean palace and tunnel system beneath his family estate.

"But the caverns that lay beneath the surface of Welbeck Abbey were neither as dark nor as twisted as the secrets that lay behind the Cavendish-Bentinck name."

Sounds like fun!


3 comments:

tshsmom said...

Sounds interesting. I may have to borrow this one from you. ;)

ZC said...

Hmm, intriguing. From the way it's described in the blurb though, it sounds like the story of one of those incest dungeons. :P

S.M. Elliott said...

It could be...I'm not very far into it yet. :S