The House of Drogo Montagu is the family name of the Dukes and Earls of Manchester. In 1926, the eldest son of the 9th Duke married a young Australian woman, Nell Stead, later dubbed the ‘dissolute duchess’ for habits like eating stark naked at dinner parties. Subsequent generations of the family have included the ‘dubious duke’ and the ‘dodgy duke’, so named for behaviour including swindling and fraud. This compulsive account of excess and eccentricity shows how young men, born into a life of privilege, were left with fortunes whittled away by bad luck, war and indulgence and left without life skills. This is how one house crumbled through four generations.

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