On Friday 25th May, 1934, a forty-one-year-old woman walked into the lobby of Claridge's Hotel to meet the nineteen-year-old son whose face she did not know. Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man. An inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter, painted by William Orpen, and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Sackville went on to divorce a total of five times, yet died with a picture of her first love by her bed. Her struggle to reinvent her life with each new marriage left one husband murdered and branded her the 'high priestess' of White Mischief's bed-hopping Happy Valley in Kenya. Sackville's life was so scandalous that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne. Now, Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville's road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century.

The Hon. Frances Osborne is a British author. She is the eldest daughter of former Conservative Cabinet Minister David Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford.

Osborne is the wife of the British shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. The couple have two young children.

Her first book, published in September 2004 by Doubleday, is a work of non-fiction called Lilla's Feast, in which she tells the story of her great-grandmother's life.

She is also descended from the much-married British aristocrat Lady Idina West by her first marriage to politician Euan Wallace; Idina married thirdly (as his first wife) Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll.