What the heck's a 'Dollar Princess'?

warning: contains extreme glamour!

Firstly, a reminder that on Sunday, 7pm, London time, I’ll be online with the brilliant Helen Lewis of The Bluestocking! Do you enjoy her weird and wonderful weekly round-up of strange stuff as much as I do? Or her funny Radio Four programme called Strong Message Here? She’s best known as a journalist but she really likes history, and there’s plenty of it to be found in her new book The Genius Myth, which she’ll be telling us about on Sunday night! Do send me any questions you’d like me to ask her.

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Now for this week’s post.

I had the loveliest day recently at Kenwood House, English Heritage’s property in north London, to talk to the team there as they were setting up their new exhibition ‘HEIRESS: Sargent’s American Portraits’.

It’s about the ‘Dollar Princesses,’ the name journalists gave to the rich American heiresses who came over to Britain round the turn of the twentieth century and who made a habit of marrying members of the aristocracy.

You know, like Lady Cora in Downton Abbey: she brings a fortune, he brings a title.