The Secret Rooms : : a True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess, and a Family Secret

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Includes index.
For fans of Downton Abbey: the enthralling true story of family secrets and aristocratic intrigue in the days before WWI. After the Ninth Duke of Rutland, one of the wealthiest men in Britain, died alone in a cramped room in the servants' quarters of Belvoir Castle on April 21, 1940, his son and heir ordered the room, which contained the Rutland family archives, sealed. Sixty years later, Catherine Bailey became the first historian given access. What she discovered was a mystery: the Duke had painstakingly erased three periods of his life from all family records-but why? As Bailey uncovers the answers, she also provides an intimate portrait of the very top of British society in the turbulent days leading up to World War I"-- Provided by publisher.

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secret seems fine submitted by Sara W on August 19, 2014, 10:17pm I found this book riveting to begin with - every few pages, a new mystery presented itself as the author dug deeper and deeper into the family archives at Belvoir Castle. Author Catherine Bailey went to historic Belvoir Castle to research and write about how the family supported the war effort during WWI. Instead, she discovered carefully constructed gaps in the records and plunged into piecing together a true history of the Manners family.

I thought it was brilliant that Bailey wrote herself into the book, giving the reader the experience of being a researcher, digging through old correspondence, following desperate leads and finding creative avenues to uncover long-lost details. She really had me turning pages each time her findings led to new unknowns. She quotes correspondence of the main characters at great length, giving characters such as Violet and Charlie real life on the page. I was quite intrigued through the discovery of the first cover-up, which dealt with the death of Haddon, the eldest son and heir. While many details remain unknown, the extreme grief of Henry and Violet and their neglectful treatment of John, were heartbreaking, yet, we still don't know the real story.

By the end, as the answers to the questions became clear and the facts emerged, I just felt rather badly about everyone involved and that a man, no matter how privileged, had spent his life and last moments trying to leave a clean record of his flawed life, and how gleefully I was reading a book whose sole purpose was to undo that work and lay open the moments in his life of which he was most ashamed.