Catherine Bailey (1) (1960–)

Yet another reason why I don't settle on my top books of the year until the very last minute: I've just finished Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms: A True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess & a Family Secret (Penguin, 2013), and it will certainly end up making the list of my favorite books for this year.

Bailey was given access to the family archives of the Dukes of Rutland, held at Belvoir Castle, the family seat. The archives had been basically locked up in their rooms from show more the time of the death of the 9th Duke in 1940 until the early part of this century, and Bailey was one of the first historians permitted access. She'd intended to write quite a different book, one about the experiences of the men of Belvoir and the surrounding estates during World War I, but when she began exploring the archives she found the story she tells here, and determined to recount that instead. We should be very glad she did.

The 9th Duke spent the final years of his life closeted away in the rooms where the archives were kept, and in fact even died there, on a small couch, surrounded by the family papers. When Bailey began her search, she quickly found that the 9th Duke's motives had not been entirely pure of heart: he had created three very precise, but very thorough, gaps in the archival record by removing all the correspondence and papers for those date ranges. Bailey set out to discover just what happened during those periods, and that hunt forms the basic structure for the book. What she finds is a tale of real family drama and somewhat shocking behavior on the part of a good number of people.

I had a terrible time putting this down once I started reading. Bailey's account of her efforts to puzzle out the events of those three mysterious periods makes for riveting reading, and it's really a pleasure to dig into her own research process and methods ... not to mention all the fascinating things she manages to learn. I'm not going to share any of those here: go off and read the book.

This is not, I admit, a perfect book. The title and subtitle are slightly overdrawn (except for the "plotting duchess and a family secret" part), and not only do some questions remain unanswered, but there are also certain points that just prove unsatisfying or anticlimactic. But on the whole, I found this a tremendously interesting book, and recommend it highly. show less

This was a brilliant read! The Secret Rooms - A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey is the result of a tonne of research delivered in a gripping narrative non fiction style that had me telling multiple people about it before I'd even finished.

If you'd asked me if I cared about the life of the 9th Duke of Rutland and his family, I'd have said no. What about the history of Belvoir Castle? I'd probably have given it a Google, marvelled at the impressive architecture, looked at any available show more images of the interiors and then moved on. So why did I pick this book up? In one word? The blurb! (Or is that two words?) The blurb contained a really good mystery I wanted to know more about and I love when rooms are locked for decades and then re-entered.

In 1940, John the 9th Duke of Rutland was one of Britain's wealthiest men, yet he died holed up in the servant's quarters of Belvoir Castle. Living out his last days secluded in an area comprising five damp rooms, doctors firmly encouraged him to move to luxurious accommodations elsewhere in the castle but John refused.

After his death, John's son closed up the rooms and they remained locked and untouched for sixty years. Author and researcher Catherine Bailey was one of the first to be granted access to these rooms and there she discovered what John had been feverishly working on right up until his death. Of course I wanted to know, don't you?

The Secret Rooms was published in 2012 and it's mentioned in the blurb so it's not a spoiler to say that John was an obsessive collector and had been organising and cataloguing his family's correspondence. The family archive contained hundreds of files spanning nine hundred years of history and contained tens of thousands of documents. On closer inspection, the author discovered that letters for three distinct periods in John's life - in 1894, 1909 and 1915 - had been removed from the collection. Why? Was he trying to hide something? And what was it?

Bailey draws on the contents of the available letters and diary entries in addition to military records and other sources in order to piece together what happened in John's life during these periods that he was trying to conceal.

Belvoir castle is in Leicestershire and built in the Gothic style with 356 rooms and I loved learning about it. It's an impressive looking structure and thankfully the book includes a comprehensive floor plan which was incredibly useful.

"The servants - maids of all descriptions, odd-job men, footmen, the flag man, the hall porter, the telephone boy, the boiler stoker and the stewards' room boy - were seated on the two benches that ran either side of a long table beneath a photograph of King George VI." Page 14

Of course, this wasn't all of the servants, you also have the housekeeper, butler, valet, chaplain, coal carriers, watermen, watchmen, lamp men and more. It's like Downton Abbey on steroids.

"In 1899, the castle had a groom of chambers, a house steward, an usher of the hall, a chef, a pastry chef, a confectioner, a plate butler, a clockman, a steward's room boy - and housemaids, kitchen maids, scullery maids, footmen, odd-job men, and porters galore." Page 169

"In the castle's grounds, there were hundreds more: grooms, stable lads, dairy maids, studmen, brewers, rat catchers, mole catchers, millers, mechanics, gardeners, groundsmen, gamekeepers, river keepers, huntsmen, kennelmen, slaughtermen, stockmen, horsemen, farm hands and woodsmen." Page 169

Bailey explains that in 1914, there were thirty Dukes - the highest honour the Crown could bestow - and they enjoyed privileges that seem scarcely credible to today's reader. This family had ruled over the neighbourhood for eight hundred years and some of the scenes described of family funerals held on the estate were extraordinary.

The astute among you will have noticed that one of the gaps in John's family correspondence occurred during the First World War and it's fair to say that a good deal of the research Bailey relates takes place during the war. This may deter some readers, however the author strings the narrative together so well by including telegrams (damnation!) and letters that keep the pace trucking along and on topic.

Bailey takes the reader along for the ride and has distilled John's life to a ripping tale and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to the bottom of the three 'secrets'.

In the Acknowledgements section of the book, the author thanks her mother Carol for deciphering and typing out the many thousands of letters she found. I have so many questions about this and the book that I'm currently trying to track down the author in order to invite her to conduct an interview with me for Carpe Librum.

The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey contains family secrets and cover ups, overzealous matchmaking, military movements and misdeeds, cryptology, pathological behaviour, aristocratic abuse of power and a privileged way of life many of us cannot begin to comprehend.

Highly recommended and an unexpected contender for My Top 5 Books of 2026. show less

This may end up one of the best books I read all year. Not only did Catherine Bailey find a fascinating mystery to solve, but the way she writes is very good. She intersperses questions that went through her mind and hooks to answers she found, but isn’t ready to reveal. If she hadn’t done that, the mystery itself would have probably been interesting enough to carry the book, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed the tale so much. She also does a great job of balancing expository information and show more clues and advancements in the tale. That way we readers (especially non-British subjects) understand context and import of why what she found was so astonishing (or didn’t find in some cases).

Having watched a couple seasons of Downton Abbey, I can see definite similarities and wonder if a little of Belvoir is in the mix for the show. The allure of that vanished way of life is intensely appealing in a lot of ways. To have that much money, privilege and power is astonishing in this day and age. In some ways I am saddened that the English economy and socio-political structure collapsed, shutting it down entirely, but it had to happen. Luckily many large estates still survive, if in a shrunken state.

I won’t get into specifics because it’s better to read this one without knowing too many of the turning points ahead of time, but not all of the 3 central secrets are totally solved. Haddon’s death (don’t worry that detail comes early) is still shrouded in lies and euphemisms. For it and the other secrets, my mind ran away with me hard down the road of speculation. Much of what I suspected didn’t turn out to be true, but it was fun to guess and reformulate based on a new item uncovered by the writer.

The lengths that Violet goes to are extreme and lays her psyche open pretty well. She was so indulged her whole life that any and all thoughts, actions or approaches were automatically sanctioned not only by her, but by everyone around her. The result is a thoroughly self-centered and ruthless person. Cruelty, lies, manipulation, whatever it took to keep Violet feeling in control and able to stay safely away from what hurt her was on the table. Despite her circumstances, I think she was in denial a lot of the time. What was baffling was her intense efforts on John’s behalf in the latter half of his life after virtually ignoring him for the first half. In this day and age, the family’s treatment of John could be construed as abuse; certainly neglect. Emotionally he was left out to dry and it’s no wonder that the became a solitary, bookish person rather than the social powerhouse his new role as eldest son required of him. I don’t know if he ever settled to his fate, but in the end he took steps to try to erase the unseemly parts of his legacy. Lucky for us he didn’t entirely succeed. show less

I love Catherine Bailey - she really knows how to weave a fantastic tale out of the bare facts of historical research. Her book on Wentworth Woodhouse was fascinating, but this account of Belvoir Castle and the Duke of Rutland is truly captivating! I may have read too much historical fiction, but I could almost imagine I was reading a novel, not the real lives of an aristocratic family in the twentieth century. John Manners, the 9th Duke of Rutland, died in 1940, but had squirreled himself show more away in a set of 'secret rooms' in the family castle before dying alone, determined to finish something of great importance before time ran out. Nearly 70 years later, the author arrives at Belvoir with a special pass to visit the Duke's rooms and research the family archives - five rooms of documents dating back centuries - for a planned book on the First World War. What she discovered was far more intriguing - John had apparently censored his own history in the reams of correspondence, for three particular dates - 1894, when he was eight, 1909,when he was a diplomat's assistant in Rome, and 1915, when he was serving in France during WW1. Why? What was John trying to hide?

I was absolutely riveted - missing letters, secret codes, family secrets (of course), and Catherine Bailey's cleverly paced cliffhangers! A hidden batch of letters, a trunk of overlooked correspondence, the cracking of the code - the pieces all slowly start to come together, and while the revelations are not exactly devastating (must be all that historical fiction), the final family portrait of the Manners family is both decadent and dysfunctional. Someone should turn this book into a miniseries! The curmudgeonly duke and his cruel wife, their lonely son who abandons duty for love, and the secret rooms at the castle. There's even a dodgy American spy thrown in for good measure! Yes, the final chapters are slightly repetitive, drawing out the reason behind John's wartime secret, but overall, a well-researched and exciting historical 'mystery'.

I seriously cannot recommend this book enough - fact is freakier than fiction! show less