The best biographies are indisputably only written after the death of their subjects as this respectful book amply demonstrates. Bronwen Pugh worked as a continuity announcer for the BBC and as a model; in the latter profession, she was particularly associated with the French couturier Pierre Balmain. In 1960, at the age of 30, she married, as the third wife of William, Viscount Astor and became chatelaine of one of England's most famous and beautiful country houses, Cliveden. The association of her husband and his home with the Profumo political scandal forms the centrepiece of Stanford's book. The author devotes relatively little space to the aftermath, Astor's death in 1966, his widow's conversion to Roman Catholicism four years later and her subsequent training as a psychotherapist. Except as a personal tribute, it is difficult to see quite what the purpose of this biography is. Bronwen Astor comes across as a decent and honourable woman, but really little different from thousands of others, except that she happens to have a British title. It is not enough.
