Lord porchester (Porchey) and his young, glamorous Anglo-American wife Catherine Wendell were stationed in India in March 1923 when they received a telegram from Egypt, telling them that Porchey’s father, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, was dangerously ill.

The 5th Earl was only 56 when he died and Porchey and Catherine had been married less than a year. In addition to the grief and the worry for her husband, Catherine had to prepare for a new life. She was no longer the wife of an army officer. She had suddenly become the chatelaine of Highclere Castle, one of the loveliest country houses in England. She and Porchey were now the 6th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon. Both 1926 and 1927 were glorious years for Catherine and Porchey. They had two children, Henry and Anne Penelope, whom they adored. The house was financially secure, they were young and wealthy and the Roaring 20s were in full swing. London was only an hour away by train and there was a huge amount of fun to be had there. Porchey in particular took full advantage.

When Porchey was in London without Catherine he stayed at one of his five clubs. He frequently joined the Prince of Wales and Prince George, who took their carousing very seriously. Various pretty girls accompanied them, champagne flowed at the Embassy Club on Old Bond Street. There would be cabaret acts or a jazz band until the early hours when the guests tumbled out on to the streets.

Catherine adored her husband and hoped her devotion to their family life would be enough to make him curb his behaviour. It was not. Porchey’s liaisons continued, and grew more numerous. They were a torment for her but, rather than challenge him, she preferred to hope, against the odds, for him to reform himself. In the meantime, the sadness that had settled since her brother’s death grew and grew. So too did her dependence on drinking as a means to muffle and control it. By 1933 she was spending more and more time alone at the castle, often with not enough to do. Once she had visited her children, discussed the planning of the day’s meals with the cook and had her meeting with the housekeeper, she might take coffee in her sitting room and catch up on correspondence, but that done it was far too easy to drift into the drawing room and pour herself a drink.

In 1934 Porchey fell in love with Tanis Montagu, whose divorce from the second son of the Earl of Sandwich was almost complete. In October he invited her to a party at Highclere. Catherine was in despair. She knew he had met someone and had hoped it was more of the same. Tanis was a soignée beauty, confident and a fixture in Hollywood circles. She was intensely exciting to Porchey and would soon prove to be the last straw for Catherine. Porchey spent most of the spring with Tanis and, when he began to plead with Catherine for a divorce, she saw that her position at Highclere was now untenable. Having resolved to leave as soon as possible, she took just a week to pack up her most important possessions. The household was in shock. Though everyone had known this outcome was always a possibility, the staff now found themselves wrestling with divided loyalties. Lord Carnarvon was their employer, but Lady Carnarvon was better known to them and an object of sympathy.