Black diamonds

When the sixth Earl Fitzwilliam dies in 1902, he leaves the second largest estate in twentieth-century England, worth more than £3 billion in today's money. Tens of thousands of people depend on it for their living, whether in the family's coal mines or on its land. The earl also leaves four sons, so the family line looks secure.

This is narrative history, and a true story. Catherine Bailey follows the Fitzwilliam coal-mining dynasty and Wentworth, their enormous country house, which is the largest private home in England. She retraces the family's history to ask whether that security was ever real.

What she finds is a record of bitter feuds and scandals. One is the ill-fated affair between Peter Fitzwilliam and the American heiress Kick Kennedy. Alongside the private quarrels runs civil unrest, as the long conflict between the coal industry and its miners reaches a breaking point.

The book reads like a novel while keeping to documented detail, and it moves between the drawing rooms of the aristocracy and the coalfields that paid for them. It suits readers who enjoy the real-life stories of England's aristocrats and want to see how a fortune of this size came apart.