The Scandalous Lady W cover art

The Scandalous Lady W

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Scandalous Lady W

By: Hallie Rubenhold
Narrated by: Emily Pennant-Rea
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £13.99

Buy Now for £13.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

It was the divorce that scandalised Georgian England. She was a spirited young heiress. He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government.

Their marriage had the makings of a fairy tale but ended as one of the most salacious and highly publicised divorces in history.

For over 200 years the story of Lady Worsley, her vengeful husband, and her lover, George Maurice Bisset, lay forgotten. Now Hallie Rubenhold throws open a window to a rarely seen view of Georgian England, one coloured by passion, adventure and the defiance of social convention.

The book behind the major new BBC drama starring Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay).

Hallie Rubenhold is a social historian and an authority on women's lives of the past. She has worked as a curator for the National Portrait Gallery and as a university lecturer. Her books include Lady Worsley's Whim, dramatized by the BBC as The Scandalous Lady W, and Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List, which inspired the ITV series Harlots. She lives in London with her husband.

©2008 Hallie Rubenhold (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd 18th Century Europe Great Britain Modern Marriage England

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Mary Boleyn cover art
The Duchess cover art
Lancaster and York cover art
The Transatlantic Marriage Bureau cover art
The Real Queen Charlotte cover art
Great and Horrible News cover art
The Guns of Navarone cover art
A Brief History of Britain 1660 - 1851 cover art
Mary Shelley cover art
The Lost Queen cover art
Duchess, Countess cover art
The Lessons cover art

Critic reviews

"A fabulous story and Rubenhold tells it beautifully." (Daily Telegraph)

"Hallie Rubenhold is in a league of her own. She keeps you glued to the very last page when, exhausted, exasperated and elated, you can at last put the book down and get yourself some sleep.... Nothing else in the genre is close to being this good." (Literary Review)

All stars
Most relevant  
Narrator gabbled on occasions, especially on long sentences or explanations. It rather spoilt the experience.

Good interesting listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I didn’t know too much about this extraordinary lady and her life, but I now feel like I know her better. So well written and read beautifully. Highly recommended to all history lovers and learners.

Fantastic!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have been wanting to read this for quite awhile and so was eager to get started but I kinda wished I hadn’t. The narration was slow and so was the story. The story went off on lots of tangents that didn’t feel relevant and so I started to loose interest in the main people. Some interesting facts about the era, especially from a female perspective though. Just think that it didn’t need to be that long.

Not what I hoped for

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the 3rd book of Hallie Rubenhold's that I've listened to and I'd recommend all of them.

Her style of writing is excellent, she is always sympathetic and non-judgemental about the women she writes about and her books are always incredibly well researched.
I'd never heard of Lady Seymour Worsley before, I downloaded this book after listening to 'The Covent Garden Ladies' I'm really glad I did!
She was a woman born well before her time and what a fascinating woman she was (I mean just look at her portrait!)
Married off to a man who was an inadequate match for her in every way except financially, she enjoyed herself and her life in any way she could.
This was fine as long as everything was hush, hush....but Seymour when provoked had other ideas.

The book was narrated perfectly by Emily Pennant-Rea and I'd really recommend it.

What a Woman!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Like listening to a novel - really gripping. An incredible level of detail and brilliantly written

Incredible level of detail and so interesting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Really disappointed in how the author has turned a fascinating scandel into a dreary and tedious story. Was expecting so much more. the writing style was just so dissapionting. The detail was all in the wrong places and lacking in the areas you really wanted it to be. Written as a narrative of concurrent facts with very little to interest or draw in.

Made a fascinating story tedious

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
informative and compelling listen, even when some of it sounded so outrageous to be true. Definitely worth a listen. The narrator was very good.

Interesting....

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brought due to the 2015 BBC movie Adaptation

I read The Five. Recommend that non fiction.

The narrator made this scandalous story from Georgian Era tedious to follow.

No images are included in the hardcopy edition like The Five. The book cover cuts off at the face !

Tedious

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Overall I enjoyed the book, however so many times the ‘we do not know what happened’ summary seemed to apply and created frustrating loose ends in the lives of those captured.

Well narrated though a little quiet (hence the three stars)

Pleasant historical biography

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A bit long winded in places, I found myself drifting off with too much detail about unnecessary things. Clearly describes what it was like for a woman, even an economically privileged women to have very few rights in the context of separation and divorce.

Enjoyed it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews