NI author Lyndsy Spence on her fascination with Lady Jean Massereene; the German princess, Mariga Guinness, who lived in Glenarm and invited the late Ian Paisley and Bernadette Devlin to tea; and why she was slated on Greek TV for her Maria Callas book

"I know it's so weird. When all my friends were getting Furbies for Christmas, I got a big wind-up Victrola (gramophone). I used to get antiques for Christmas and my birthday," says Lyndsy, 37, who admits she doesn’t have a smartphone and sometimes feels like an anachronism.

This love of things past, may go some way to explaining her interest in history’s ‘scandalous and forgotten’ women, whom she has written about in eight bestselling books.

Next weekend, the Antrim woman will be among a prestigious line-up of guests at the Ballyscullion Park Book Festival, where she will talk about the notable women who feature in her books, including, the Mitford sisters, Vivien Leigh, Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll, Maria Callas, Mariga Guinness and Antrim Castle’s Lady Massereene.

“I am very reserved, but it's quite nice to read about other people and their mayhem…..the TV reality shows have nothing on the aristocrats…. they're the original sort of naughty people”.

Since she was a little girl, Lyndsy has been fascinated with Antrim Castle and the landed gentry who resided there, in particular Lady Jean, who died in 1937 at the age of 54.

“The Viscountess Jean Massereene has been the driving force behind my work on the aristocrats. She was quite an outcast and scandalous, in a way. She was very political and friendly with Sir Edward Carson, even though her father was a home ruler. She was an occultist and accused of witchcraft in the 1920s,” said Lyndsy, who shares an interest in astrology and tarot cards, and was taught to read tea leaves by her granny.

Lyndsy is saddened there is no commemoration to the glamorous, six-foot-tall chatelaine of Antrim Castle, who had jet black hair, a beauty spot and wore revealing clothes.

“There's not a photograph, there's not a plaque, there's nothing. It's really sad, because she founded the NSPCC in Antrim, had so many charities for locals, and was a nurse during World War I.

"I just think she's really inspiring and I love that she was a nonconformist, and moved, not only in her own world, but in a man's world.”

Lyndsy has also written about another local artistocrat, Mariga Guinness, who lived in Glenarm in the 1970s.

“She was a German-born princess, who co-founded the Irish-Georgian Society with her husband Desmond Guinness. In the 1970s she moved to Glenarm. To me, that's just fascinating that a German princess was living in the Old Courthouse with her big Egyptian bed and her horse. She was just so eccentric. She used to dress like a suffragette and walk about Glenarm. She thought she could solve the conflict here by inviting Bernadette Devlin and Ian Paisley to tea! I just love people like that, that have no filter, but mean well.”

Lyndsy, who established the online Mitford Society, is well known for her book on the Mitford sisters, six aristocratic siblings whose lives mirrored the turbulence of the 20th century and were dubbed ‘the duchess, the fascist, the communist, the Nazi, the novelist and, er, the other one’.

“I think the real interest was how could six sisters who had really eccentric but boring parents turn out so wild. In my book, She Who Dares, I wrote a chapter on their mother, Sydney Redesdale. Her father was the son of a Victorian MP and a chambermaid. His stepmother was very radical. She was involved with the unification of Italy. She was involved in spiritualism and hosted the likes of Dickens and at her salon. I think it probably skipped the generation and then hit the (Mitford) girls.”

Lyndsy, who has worked for The Lady magazine, the late Queen’s favourite, is interested in scandalous women and forgotten women because “they have a lot in common”.

"The forgotten ones, obviously, because nobody's delved into them too much, and they have an amazing story that's waiting to be told. And the scandalous women have often been wronged. I loved just delving into the human side of their story and making their story relatable….sort of fixing their life in a way, redeeming them.”

As an example, she points to the much vilified Duchess of Argyll, whom the judge during her divorce case described as a “highly sexed woman”.

“When I did my book on the Duchess, who's obviously remembered for her naughty photographs from the 60s, by the end of it, there was just somebody whose privacy was breached. I feel like I made her more of a human being than this scarlet woman.”

Lyndsy’s book, Cast a Diva: The Hidden Life of Maria Callas, has been translated into many different languages and the film and documentary rights snapped up.

“Again, I've taken the Callas myth away and just presented Maria the woman, who had an extraordinary talent, but at the end of the day was very human.”

However, it was that book and the fallout from a particular newspaper article, which almost prompted Lyndsy to shelve her writing career.

“When the book came out in 2021 there was a newspaper article with a really sensational headline. The foreign press picked up on it and it went everywhere. But as it got translated the headlines got even worse…..apparently I had written that Maria Callas was a prostitute in Nazi-occupied Greece. I didn't say anything like that!”

The furore escalated to the point where there was a discussion on “the equivalent of Greek-Loose Women”.

“The panel were going mad about it. I had threats from people, because Callas fans just couldn't take it. People had revealed my address online. I went through a year of litigation, which cost an absolute fortune. Nothing became of it because there were no grounds, but to be trolled like that for no good reason was horrible.

"The book ended up getting translated into Greek and Portuguese and when they read it, they realised it wasn't a bad book. I felt vindicated that I could write the wrongs of a story, that Maria Callas lost her voice, not because she was a diva, but because she actually had an illness that was very similar to MS.

"However, that experience really scared me to the point where I didn’t want to write another book. It was my publisher who said, you can't let them win.”

Thankfully, Lyndsy took her publisher’s advice and continues to write her gripping historical fiction, and has been fortunate to form friendships with the some of her aristocratic icons and their relatives, including Denise Massereene, Jean Massereene’s granddaughter-in-law.

"I was quite starstruck. We met up a few times. It's always quite nice when you can develop that friendship.

“Again, with the actress Margaret Lockwood, I worked on what became her authorised biography. I chased her daughter for five years before she would even talk to me, then it ended up a really close friendship. She actually gave me Margaret Lockwood's big amethyst ring.”

Lyndsy is currently working with filmmakers on a biopic of Vivien Leigh called The Florist. and is involved in a project on Selena Quintanilla, a famous Latin American singer from Texas, who was murdered by the president of her fan club 30 years ago.

What comes across in Lyndsy’s books is her affection for her subjects.

“I know some of the people misbehave a lot, but apart from Diana Mitford, there's a sense that you love them, because you live with them for so long researching and writing about them.”

*Lyndsy Spence will be at the Ballyscullion Park Book Festival, May 10-11. Visit: www.ballyscullionpark.com/