The Royal Family and the Spencers: 200 Years of Friendship by Nerina Shute

PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED, DATED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR ON THE TITLE PAGE THUS: "Nov 13th 1986 - publication day For Alfred Smith With all good wishes Nerina Shute"; Robert Hale 1986 1st ed, 223pp., text generally in decent order albeit with small creases to the top right/top left hand corners of pages 121 thru' 140, a couple of tiny marks towards the bottom of the front board, bumping to top & bottom of spine, the dust jacket has some internal blue staining (from the boards?), is a bit rubbed & creased at top & bottom with a couple of tiny patches of scuffing & some scratches & indentations on front & rear. Very rare indeed to find any book signed by Nerina Shute who died in October 2004 aged 96.


This is a charming 1986 book written by one of Britain's then best-known elderly travelogue writers Nerina Shute, the widow of longtime BBC commentator Howard Marshall. She had worked for the legendary Max Beaverbrook during the 1940s as a columnist (and was therefore a colleague of Diana's step-grandmother Barbara Cartland), was later published as a novelist, but writing about English villages and historic British figures were her specialty. This book details certain famous and powerful members of the Spencer/Churchill dynasty whose lives touched upon the Royal Houses of Stuart, Hanover, and Windsor such as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, her great-great-granddaughter Georgiana, the fifth Duchess of Devonshire, her nephew the third Earl Spencer, Winston Churchill's American-born mother Jennie Jerome, among others. Among Shute’s many friends were Alfred Hitchcock, Anna Neagle and Herbert Wilcox.


Will ship by Royal Mail 1st Class Signed for, well packaged.