The Scandalous Lady W: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce

Hallie Rubenhold reconstructs the marriage of Seymour Fleming, a spirited young heiress, and Sir Richard Worsley, a baronet with a promising career in government, who wed in 1775. Their life in fashionable London society unravelled when Seymour began an affair with Maurice George Bisset, a militia captain and the Worsleys' friend and neighbour.

In 1782 Sir Richard sued Bisset for criminal conversation, demanding £20,000 in damages. The trial turned on what Worsley himself had encouraged, including an afternoon at a bath house, and the jury awarded him a single shilling.

Drawing on trial records, newspapers, pamphlets and letters, Rubenhold follows the consequences for both of them: public humiliation, financial ruin and years of exile, in one of the first celebrity divorce scandals.

First published in 2008 as Lady Worsley's Whim, and in the US as The Lady in Red, the book was reissued under its current title to accompany the 2015 BBC drama.