The accidental Duchess

One of the UK’s most powerful Duchesses, Emma Manners went from growing up in obscurity in Wales, to running an interior design company and then singlehandedly transforming the fortunes of one of Britain’s most stunning Castles, Belvoir Castle.

Since she moved into the Castle, the Duchess of Rutland has organised some of the region’s most popular days out. From the Festival of the Horse and Dog Fest to the Belvoir Castle Flower Show and Medieval Re-enactment Days, the Duchess has ensured that her family home is open for all the public to enjoy.

This month the Duchess of Rutland publishes her official autobiography, The Accidental Duchess, which details how her life as a Duchess – from living on the set of The Crown, a vast castle with over 200 rooms, to partying with Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant – couldn’t be further from her upbringing as a farm girl on the Welsh Boarders who had never even heard of the Duke of Rutland and had no idea who he was when she first met him aged 27.

In this classic rags to riches tale, the Duchess lets readers into her life and her family home for the first time and share’s the rich history of the Rutland family, as well as personal anecdotes from

   THE ACCIDENTAL DUCHESS

Pan Macmillan |Hardback £12.99 |15^th September 2022

Life in a castle isn’t always a fairytale, as the Duchess of Rutland vividly illustrates in her fascinating, revealing and funny autobiography.

When Emma Watkins, the pony-mad daughter of a Welsh farmer, imagined her future it was as the wife of a younger version of her father. But then she fell in love with David Manners, having no idea that he was heir to one of the most senior hereditary titles in the land. When David succeeded his father, against all the odds Emma became the chatelaine of Belvoir Castle, ancestral home of the Dukes of Rutland.

She had to cope with five boisterous children while faced with a vast estate in desperate need of modernisation and staff who wanted nothing to change – it was a daunting responsibility. Yet with sound advice from the doyenne of duchesses, ‘Debo’ Devonshire, she met each challenge with optimism and gusto, including scaling the castle roof in a storm to unclog a flooding gutter; being caught in her nightdress by mesmerised Texan tourists; and disguising herself as a cleaner to watch filming of The Crown. She even took on the castle ghosts . . .

  At times the problems she faced seemed insoluble, yet with her unstoppable energy and talent for thinking on the hoof, she won through, inspired by the vision and passion of those Rutland duchesses in whose footsteps she trod, and indeed the redoubtable and resourceful women who forged her, whose homes were not castles but remote farmhouses in the Radnorshire hills.

Vividly written and bursting with insights, The Accidental Duchess will appeal to everyone who has visited a stately home and wondered what it would be like to live there.