---
product_id: 64785641
title: "The Secret Rooms: A Castle Filled with Intrigue, a Plotting Duchess and a Mysterious Death"
brand: "catherine bailey"
price: "฿1371"
currency: THB
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 5
url: https://www.desertcart.co.th/products/64785641-the-secret-rooms-a-castle-filled-with-intrigue-a-plotting
store_origin: TH
region: Thailand
---

# The Secret Rooms: A Castle Filled with Intrigue, a Plotting Duchess and a Mysterious Death

**Brand:** catherine bailey
**Price:** ฿1371
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

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- **What is this?** The Secret Rooms: A Castle Filled with Intrigue, a Plotting Duchess and a Mysterious Death by catherine bailey
- **How much does it cost?** ฿1371 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Currently out of stock
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.th](https://www.desertcart.co.th/products/64785641-the-secret-rooms-a-castle-filled-with-intrigue-a-plotting)

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## Description

The Secret Rooms: A Castle Filled with Intrigue, a Plotting Duchess and a Mysterious Death

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A most assiduous piece of research
  

*by R***U on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 February 2021*

John, the 9th Duke of Rutland, had for long been a recluse in a set of five rooms at Belvoir Castle. On 22nd April 1940, after a short illness, he died on a sofa in one of these rooms, having refused to move to a more comfortable bedroom elsewhere in the castle:  there was, he had said, “something he had to finish”.The historian Catherine Bailey first came to Belvoir in 2008. It was known that the collection of family papers at Belvoir was unrivalled in its scope, though very few people had been granted access to it. On the death of John, Charles,  the 10th Duke, whose relationship with his father was not good,  had sealed these five Muniment Rooms which contained the family archives;  but Bailey had been allowed access by David, the 11th Duke.  John had meticulously organized and added to these archives.Bailey knew that hundreds of the tenants of Henry, the 8th Duke’s estates, not only in Leicestershire, but also in several other North Midland counties,  had, at his instigation, volunteered to join the army in the early days of the First World War, and she wanted to research their lives, and also to learn something of the ducal family and the incredibly privileged life they led.Examining the archives, she found that, as far as the papers relating to John were concerned, there were three gaps in the records, and, although she found a lot of material relating to her original aim of research, it was the exploration of these gaps that now became to focus of her research.The first of these was a gap of 87 days in 1894, when John was seven. Later, she discovered that this was the time of the death of John’s elder brother, Haddon, for which Violet,  their mother, seems to have indirectly blamed John, whom she sent away to live with her brother, Charlie Lindsay, who became something of a father figure for John.The second gap, of 117 days, came in 1909, when John, then aged 21, had a post at the embassy in Rome.  This, she found out, was a period when there was a furious row between John and his father Henry, the 8th Duke, about financial matters:  Henry, who was heavily in debt, had wanted John to sign an agreement by which Henry could sell assets that, by trust deeds, had been entailed.  John had called in lawyers to contest his father’s wish.But the gap to which Bailey pays most attention is the one of 152 days between July and December of 1915.  This began while John was seeing volunteer military service in France.  His father had recruited hundreds of tenants on the Belvoir estates to volunteer likewise: 249 of them lost their lives on the western front. But John never took part in any action.  His mother had successfully pleaded with her military contacts to have John posted to the division’s headquarters, nine miles away from his battalion’s bloody battle on the Ypres Salient.  She even prostituted her own daughter to a sleazy American who was a very close friend of General Sir John French, in order to get French’s help to protect her son, and French promised to do what he could.  All this was not because she loved John, but because she needed him to live - and to marry - as he was the only heir of this branch of the Rutland family.In July 1915 John had been sent to England for a few days to recover from an outbreak of diarrhoea in his platoon – but he never returned to active service in the field.  Violet, through her contacts with senior figures, had, unbeknown to John, successfully and dishonestly schemed, with the help of certificates from the Rutlands’ family GP, to get his invalid leave extended by medical boards no fewer than fifteen times. (All this while Henry was still recruiting volunteers from his estates!)She kept her secret approaches from John, too; for John was keen to return to the front. But he never did.  Bayley discovers what made him, in April 1916 accept a post as ADC to Sir John French, who, after his failures on the Western Front, had by then been moved to the post of C.i.C of the Home Forces.In later life, John was deeply ashamed of this episode, and this would account for his going through the papers and systematically removing all records of it.  It was only after his mother’s death in 1937 that he came in possession of a mass of documents she had kept, and he began the task of destroying these.  Illness and death prevented this work from being finished.The 480 pages of this book give chronological account of Bailey’s detective work.  That is not the same as the chronology of the events she discovered, and it makes for something like a thriller.  Alongside of this, we get gruesome descriptions of the battles on the Western Front, and a vivid picture of what was still, in part, feudal England and of the privileges of the upper classes.  Even in the army,  the conditions in which officers lived  when not in action were vastly superior to those of the other ranks.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Well written piece of historical research
  

*by R***S on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 August 2023*

It was a great read and very informative. It makes me want to revisit Belvoir Castle

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A Misnomer.
  

*by B***1 on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2014*

The title of this book is a misnomer.  It should have been called "The Secret Letters" as the "Secret Rooms" in question were neither secret nor held any great secrets of particular note.  Certainly, the "secrets" the writer discovered were most probably replicated in one form or another in most of the aristocratic families in the land.I have given it four stars as it is extremely well-written and researched.  It centres on the life of the 9th Duke of Rutland - a man whom the writer describes as "sensitive" but who colluded with his family in avoiding the real horrors of the First World War and for the rest of his life was serially unfaithful to his wife.  His decision at the end of his life to excise from the family archives the letters which showed him in a less than favourable light smacks more of self-regard than sensitivity or guilt as the writer would have us believe.The book does, however, capture a period in the nation's history where great wealth and privilege still held sway over the lives of the rest of the population.  The lives of the Aristocracy were dominated by protecting that wealth and privilege at all costs.  They lacked neither morals nor scruples in defending it.  Whilst the fathers and sons of their servants and feudal tenants, urged to "go and do their bit" by the old Duke, perished in the mire of the First World War trenches, for most of the war his son languished at home carrying on his privileged existence and courting the girl he was to marry.  That old Great War marching song  "The Bells of Hell Go Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling For Me But Not For You..." was never more apt.If John, Duke of Rutland, was an unhappy man at the end of his life, the reader is left with little sympathy and a feeling that, sadly, the contents of the book did not live up to the blurb on the cover or the promise of the first few pages.  A good read nevertheless.

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*Product available on Desertcart Thailand*
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*Last updated: 2026-02-27*