Collage - Journal 1932...

Collage - Journal 1932...

Monday, April 19, 2010

Women who dared to take a different path - Lady Idina Sackville (1893 - 1955)......


..they say she was irresistible and had a seamless elegance to her – Lady Myrna Idina Sackville, daughter of Gilbert Sackville, 8th Earl de la Warr, her cousin was Vita Sackville-West (If you have an interest in V. Sackville-West read a "Portrait of a Marriage" by Nigel Nicholson). She was most definitely a rebel and one of those women who lived outside of her society's acceptance… After causing a society scandal due to her divorce and marriage to Josslyn Hay (later Lord Erroll) they moved to British East Africa in 1924, lived a reckless bohemian wild life. Known for her wild parties at her house Clouds, near Gilgil above Rift Valley which, was the center of the Happy Valley set.. When the sexual scandals of the Happy Valley reached the world's press, Lady Idina was the most famous and scandalous guiding light of them all. The “Happy Valley Set” was a group of British aristocrats and adventurers - expatriates - living in British East Africa who became notorious for their wild parties of wife swapping, promiscuous sexual encounters and drug abuse.


 She was married five times - 1923 to 1930 to Josslyn Hay - 22nd Earl of Erroll -  one of the oldest peerages in Scotland…………He was handsome, charming and a notorious womanizer ....... hereditary High
Constable of Scotland and Kenya's Assisstant Military Secretary. Later he was murdered in the early morning of January 24, 1941...but that is another story.... 

1 comment:

  1. Vita Sackville-West is one of my favorite writers! I'll have to read that book. But I've never heard of this Happy Valley Set! Immediate research follows!

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