Articles
A Note on Writing ‘Star of the Morning, The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope’
I took a long detour through other sorts of writing - journalism and travel writing - and began Star of the Morning, my first biography, at 37. I felt drawn to Lady Hester Stanhope as a subject, fascinated by the way she pushed the boundaries of what was considered possible or acceptable for a woman in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
It took me four years to research and write what I contend is the first full-length contemporary biography of Hester Stanhope. This book reveals a great deal of previously unknown material about Hester, both in terms of her most intimate life, her loves and friendships, and her ambitions and inner conflicts. When I first contemplated writing her biography, it was apparent to me that although she had been the subject of earlier accounts, none satisfactorily explained how such a woman had been shaped and formed, nor what motivated her to live her life as she had. [...]
Wild at Heart
British Vogue, October 2003
The greatest woman traveller of her time, Lady Hester Stanhope created her own oasis in a hostile nineteenth-century Middle East. Author Kirsten Ellis retraced her footsteps.
In The Footsteps of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Hester, Harems and Hamams…
This essay does not appear in Star Of The Morning; it’s merely a fanciful snippet gleaned from my research in Istanbul, intended for the interested reader, and my fellow hamam addicts!
When Lady Hester Stanhope arrived in Constantinople in November 1810, she was well aware that she was following in the footsteps of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a glimpse of whose glamour can be seen in this rather well-known portrait (pictured here). She arrived in 1716 to follow her husband, who had been appointed Ambassador to Turkey. ‘Lady W. Montagu’s’ musings on life in Turkey - and in particular the lot of Turkish women and her insights into the most intimate details of their lives - published after her death in 1761, had made her the posthumous literary celebrity of Hester’s parents’ generation.
A Tantalizing New Portrait of Lady Hester Stanhope?
I was doing a book signing at the Winter Fine Arts and Antiques Fair at Olympia last weekend, organized by Martyn Downer, fellow author and curator of this year’s loan exhibition, ‘The Earl’s Machine,’ in association with Clarion Arts,
“There’s something you have to see,” said Martyn, steering me in the direction of a stall on the other side of the hall. There, on prominent display, was this portrait, apparently of Hester. ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.