FORTUNE'S MANY HOUSES

'A Victorian Visionary, A Noble Scottish Family and A Lost Inheritance', he was a Scottish aristocrat and man of property, she too was born into high society and extraordinary wealth. Together they tried to change the world for the better but paid a heavy price. In the late 19th century, John and Ishbel Gordon, the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, were a couple who seemed to have it all - a fortune that ran into the tens of millions, a magnificent stately home in Scotland surrounded by one of Europe's largest estates, a townhouse in London's most fashionable square, cattle ranches in Texas and British Columbia, and the governorships of Ireland and Canada, where they lived like royalty. They had won praise for their work as social reformers and pioneers of women's rights, and enjoyed friendships and encounters from Britain's Prime Ministers and Queen Victoria to P.T. Barnum. Yet by the time they died in the 1930s, the couple's luck had long since run out. They had faced family tragedies, scandal through their unwitting involvement in one of the 'crimes of the century', and most catastrophically of all, losing both their fortune and their lands. Told with brio and warmth, full of towering good deeds and devastating miscalculations, the book is a fantastic fusion of biography and memoir of a golden couple, and a rich and dynamic historical portrait drawn from an invaluable insider viewpoint. 336 roughcut pages, highly desirable in the USA and eight pages of colour images.