They were confidantes to British prime ministers, but the Wyndham sisters also cultivated the acquaintance of Oscar Wilde and Henry James, and they became the subjects of a magnificent group portrait by John Singer Sargent. The wildest of the family, Mary would marry into the nobility; Madeline Adeane was the quietest and happiest of the three; and Pamela, spoiled, beautiful, and talented, was wife of the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, who took Britain into war in 1914. Claudia Renton gives us a dazzling portrait of one of England's grandest, noblest families, charting their fortunes as the privilege and bliss of the Victorian age gave way to the Edwardian era, and the Great War marked the passing of their opulent world.