A hereditary peer, when approached by Eleanor Doughty for an interview during the preparation of this book, accused her of being an agent of the deep state. Far from it. She is a Daily Telegraph journalist, although more eirenic and jocular than many of her colleagues. She has no wish, in writing a history of the British nobility since 1945, to shake foundations or to cause offence. It is evident that she admires the repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Heirs and Graces is a friendly, forgiving, good-spirited book which celebrates the adaptability, the fortitude, the oddness, the forbearance, the anger and the spite of the coronet class. Every page shows how much she likes other people. The congenial frankness she elicits from her many interviewees is winning. She finds charm in stubborn stupidity, and takes Madame de Staël’s line tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner when confronted by merciless acquisitiveness or the havoc caused by misused vitality.

Doughty opens with a vivid description of the riches, power, glamour and extinction of the earls Fitzwilliam, with their great estates in Leinster and near Rotherham and Peterborough. Given that Catherine Bailey has written so richly of the Fitz­williams in Black Diamonds, there is too much of them in Heirs and Graces, which is dedicated to three members of the dynasty. Still, it is fun to learn that the daughters of the seventh Earl Fitzwilliam were known as ‘Elfin’, ‘Pickles’ and ‘Boodley’, and that the reclusive ninth Earl Fitzwilliam was nicknamed ‘Bottle by Bottle’. 

In this generous study of human types, one interviewee emerges particularly well. The observations of the current Marquess of Salisbury show astuteness, concision and wit beyond the average. He talks of political power and the role of property with thundering good sense. What a mistake it was not to appoint