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Burn This Letter
- Author
- Susan Pedersen
- Narrator
- Fenella Fudge
- Publisher
- John Murray Press
- Publish Date
- 21 May 2026
- Run Time
- 11 hours
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
'Dazzling . . . [Pedersen's] protagonists are impulsive, gossipy, generous and undeniably intriguing' TLS
'A page-turner' History Today
'BURN THIS!' Why did so many letters between Lady Frances and Lady Betty Balfour begin this way? What did they have to hide?
Alike in so many ways - political, passionate, argumentative and deeply intelligent. It's no surprise that once Frances and Betty became sisters-in-law, they became close friends. There was just one problem. Frances was in love with Betty's husband. Their unconventional solution they found was an 'experiment in living', a ménage à quatre. Setting up homes on the same street, they shared everything: money, meals, governesses, and husbands.
When Susan Pedersen discovered their amazing cache of letters, she was spellbound.
'We tend to see elite women of this era romantically - we wonder whom they will marry and track that marriage plot - but we don't always follow them into their marriages, as they struggle to live consequential lives. Marriage isn't the end of women's lives. It can be, as it was for Frances and Betty, the catalyst to political activism.'
Her book follows their extraordinary friendship as both women seized every freedom afforded to them by the changing times, leaving their drawing rooms for the streets and the soapbox, joining the fight for the women's vote.
This is the untold story of two women - radicals, rivals, sisters - who carved a path together through an elite male world, sharing their ideals, their heartbreaks, and most of all, their secrets.
Critics Review
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Susan Pedersen's deeply researched and very engagingly written insight into the very unusual marriages of the Balfour brothers flashes new light onto an entire age. Victorian and Edwardian upper-class convention, hidden sexualities, hypocrisy, requited passion and a genuinely rigid adherence to duty: the author methodically uncovers and examines them all. The psychopathology of Lady Frances Balfour is a major historical revelation in itself. Such a gem of a book.
Andrew Roberts, author of CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY
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A gripping narrative of love, loathing and ambition amongst the Victorian elite. Abusive husbands, a secret child, country house miseries: it's all at once distant and disturbingly modern. For anyone thinking about how to reimagine marriage and motherhood today, this account of how one late-Victorian aristocratic family lived it is at once example and warning.
Stella Tillyard, author of ARISTOCRATS
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[A] remarkable story. We must be grateful that the recipients ignored one another's frequent exhortations to set fire to the missives after reading . . . Pederson is as interested in her heroines' social lives as she is in their political ambitions. And here is where the book earns its place on the history curriculum . . . More fascinating than these salacious intricacies is the relationship between the women: almost-sisters, sister-wives, allies, rivals and something more that their society had no name for
New Statesman
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Fascinating and evocative
Daily Mail
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Dazzling . . . A chronicle of their extraordinarily active private and public lives . . . Pedersen animates them with conviction . . . Her protagonists are impulsive, gossipy, generous and undeniably intriguing. She is particularly good at tracing the shifting, shimmering patterns of allegiance and jealousy in the costly fabric of high political society between the 1880s and the First World War
Times Literary Supplement
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Pedersen's lively prose animates her subjects' early years . . . A page-turner . . . We can only be grateful that, in this instance, instructions to 'Burn This Letter' were ignored
-
Praise for THE GUARDIANS
:
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The first indispensable book written on a critical subject in fifty years! Far-minded, hard-hitting and readable. The Guardians is magnificent, telling a complex yet compelling story
Wall Street Journal
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Richly detailed and genuinely revelatory
Guardian
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Susan Pedersen
- Narrator
- Fenella Fudge
- Duration
- 11 hours
- Release Date
- 21 May 2026
- ISBN
- 9781399806268
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- John Murray Press
- Genre
- Social and cultural history, Biography: general
Synopsis
'A remarkable story. We must be grateful that the recipients ignored one another's frequent exhortations to set fire to the missives after reading . . . Fascinating' New Statesman'Dazzling . . . [Pedersen's] protagonists are impulsive, gossipy, generous and undeniably intriguing' TLS'A page-turner' History Today'BURN THIS!' Why did so many letters between Lady Frances and Lady Betty Balfour begin this way? What did they have to hide? Alike in so many ways - political, passionate, argumentative and deeply intelligent. It's no surprise that once Frances and Betty became sisters-in-law, they became close friends. There was just one problem. Frances was in love with Betty's husband. Their unconventional solution they found was an 'experiment in living', a ménage à quatre. Setting up homes on the same street, they shared everything: money, meals, governesses, and husbands. When Susan Pedersen discovered their amazing cache of letters, she was spellbound.'We tend to see elite women of this era romantically - we wonder whom they will marry and track that marriage plot - but we don't always follow them into their marriages, as they struggle to live consequential lives. Marriage isn't the end of women's lives. It can be, as it was for Frances and Betty, the catalyst to political activism.'Her book follows their extraordinary friendship as both women seized every freedom afforded to them by the changing times, leaving their drawing rooms for the streets and the soapbox, joining the fight for the women's vote. This is the untold story of two women - radicals, rivals, sisters - who carved a path together through an elite male world, sharing their ideals, their heartbreaks, and most of all, their secrets.
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