Other women

de Fiona McDonald

'Other Women' tells the stories of those women who belonged to a separate part of society: in some ways invisible and socially unacceptable, but in others in positions of influence and power, comfort and even luxury. They range from the common-law marriage of Edith Swan-Neck to King Harold II, who was also legally wedded to Edith of Mercia, to the liaison between Edward VII and Alice Keppel, great-grandmother of the Duchess of Cornwall. It includes the passionate loves of great artists: Rodin, Picasso, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo and Graham Greene, as well as many more men of arts and letters.