Last Curtsey

Once upon a time, the well-bred daughters of Britain’s aristocracy took part in a female rite of passage: curtseying to the queen. Butin 1958 this ritual was coming to an end. Under pressure to shirte – not least from their mothers – the giris became the focus for newspaper diarists and society photographers in a party season that stretched for months among the great houses of England, Ireland and Scotland. Fiona MacCarthy traces the stories of the girls who curtseyed that year, and shows how their lives were to open out in often very unexpected ways – as Britain itself changed irreversibly during the ig6os, and the certainties of the old order came to an end.