Lamb with extra sauce. Mark Bostridge
Lady Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit By Antonia Fraser
Weidenfeld & Nicolson £25
Two things spring to my mind whenever the subject of Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828) crops up. One is her enchanting portrait by Thomas Phillips from 1814, which adorns the cover of Antonia Fraser’s new book. In it, Caroline is dressed in the livery of a boy page, her favoured disguise, used to gain a glimpse of the masculine freedoms denied to her as a society woman of the early-19th century. The other is the film Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), scripted and directed by Robert Bolt. Bolt’s wife, Sarah Miles, splendidly camps it up in the title role, but the film’s best line is delivered by a stately Margaret Leighton as Caroline’s ‘mother-in-law from hell’, Lady Melbourne. Informed that Caroline has died of a broken heart, Leighton exclaims, ‘My God, wouldn’t she!’ with all the force her Old Vic training can muster. ‘My God, wouldn’t she!’ pretty well sums up the...
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