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The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey (view source)
Revision as of 17:09, 14 October 2012
, 17:09, 14 October 2012no edit summary
|date=November 2012
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917559</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>0670917559B009CTZ6UE</amazonus>
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Needless to say, the author immediately rose to the challenge. She has managed to get to the root of several mysteries. Who was the intruder who broke into the castle shortly after the Duke’s death, and left apparently without taking a single document or even any other item? (You will find no spoiler in this review). What was the truth about the death in childhood of his elder brother, Lord Haddon, and did their parents deliberately falsify the official version of events? Why was little John, now heir to the title, sent away from home by his parents to be brought up by an uncle? The ramifications of the firstborn’s short life and its aftermath continued to haunt the family for a long time.
His mother Violet evidently never really recovered from the death of her adored elder son. Even so, the author pulls no punches in her portrayal of a very manipulative woman who believed that even in the early twentieth century aristocratic families were still above the law. There was evidently no love lost between mother and second son, who never really understood each other, and the result was a family rift which seemingly never healed. As for his father, he was a gentler, more reasonable character, but belonged to an age long since vanished, believing he had to live in a certain style which the income from his estates could no longer support in the post-war world. In many matters, especially those pertaining to their family, he was presumably overruled by a determined wife. It might be noted in passing that there were three sisters, the youngest being Diana, later Lady Diana Cooper, actress, socialite and mother of historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]].
The events of 1909 in Rome are also examined in some depth, as are the wartime episode and a broken engagement. However there was a more or less happy ending to this, when the young but plainly unsuited lovers moved apart and John found the real Miss Right. (Their marriage in 1916 endured, although ultimately it did not prove a happy one, and the Duchess later confided in a friend that she thought the Rutland family was not one which should be perpetuated). In the process, to coin a phrase, John Manners ended up abandoning his duty to King and country.