Review - Sheila, Robert Wainwright

There's a slightly obvious reason for being attracted to this novel, way outside my normal reading preferences. The story of a young Australian woman who arrives in England just before the outbreak of the First World War, ends up in Egypt working with injured soldiers during that war, marries a Lord, returns to England and promptly inserts herself into the upper echelons of English Aristocracy, right up to the Royal Family themselves, becoming good friends with the young Princes, and ultimately having an affair with the future George VI.

It's a piece of social history, that is sometimes absolutely fascinating and informative, and at others a long drawn out recital of names names names (with the obvious hat-tip to Ab Fab). When it's delving into the life and times, and even into the connections between the well-known, the Aristocracy and the strictures and nuances of society it's interesting, although a little more detail would have been preferable. When it's simply a bit gossipy, encumbered by a tendency to refer to names and titles that didn't necessarily call any particular significance to mind, it did become tedious.

One that you can, however, dip in and out of as mood permits, which is ultimately how this reader finished it eventually. A chapter or two at a time, when untaxing reading was required.